[00:16] Meg: Welcome to Desperately Seeking the eighties. 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.

[00:27] Meg: Where we still live and where we podcast about New York City in the eighties. I do ripped from the head, and.

[00:32] Jessica: I do pop culture.

[00:34] Meg: So, yes, I've been holding out on you.

[00:37] Jessica: So many do. Honey, mama needs a date. Okay, sorry. Go ahead.

[00:45] Meg: You had a date?

[00:47] Jessica: I had. Oh, it was terrible. It was ridiculous. Okay. I mean, truly.

[00:51] Meg: And he doesn't listen to the podcast?

[00:53] Jessica: No. Well, I mean. And even if he does, I mean, easy in, easy out, I guess. Easy cup, easy. None of these sound good. Go ahead, please.

[01:04] Meg: I was talking about dear Ben, BFF of the podcast Ben, who wrote to me a while ago, and I.

[01:12] Jessica: Is it something really nice about me?

[01:14] Meg: It's really funny. Okay.

[01:18] Jessica: All right, I'm ready.

[01:19] Meg: So this was in response to our episode 83. He's a little behind. That's cool.

[01:25] Jessica: Who cares? Who's counting?

[01:27] Meg: Yeah, exactly. So he's not gonna hear this for.

[01:29] Jessica: A while, but anyway. All right, well. Hmm.

[01:32] Meg: But episode 83 was trash tv and Thanksgiving lobster.

[01:36] Jessica: Mm.

[01:37] Meg: And he writes, meg, I must agree with you. Jessica, I will not allow you to compare my husband, Phil Donahue. Yes. I am Marlo Thomas de Geraldo, Jerry, and especially Doctor Phil, although it's undeniable that he had something to do with that whole phenomenon. Some of his gay episodes were really good. I think he was compassionate and, as Meg pointed out, interested fundamentally. Jessica, I love that you turned down doctor Phil. Applause a predatory producer almost lured me onto the Ricky Lake show when I was in college. No, they were going to have a guy who thought he might be gay go on dates with a man and a woman and then decide, and I was going to be the man date. I think they were like, oh, this dramatic queen will be perfect. I'm so glad that common sense took over. And I realized, wait, my entire body.

[02:41] Jessica: Is rigid with horror.

[02:43] Meg: And I realized that I would potentially be traumatized for life. I mean, that premise, what the actual.

[02:52] Jessica: Well, that tells you about the nineties, actually, in a way. What an amazing time capsule about how radically understanding about sex, sexuality and sexual identity has changed. And by the way, just for the record, Ricky Lake was very pro gay. She was known for being extremely much an ally, so that's what allies were doing.

[03:21] Meg: But, yeah, Ricky Lake is from the John Waters movie.

[03:25] Jessica: Yes, she's in hairspray, but she's long been known, you know, in her personal whatevers. For being very much.

[03:32] Meg: And this is as a college student. So I was just like, Ben, I'm sincerely impressed by your clarity at that age. And at that time, I would have.

[03:40] Jessica: Felt pressured to do it, even though I had never met anybody involved.

[03:44] Meg: And then it was gonna be a blip on tv that no one would ever see again because tv wasn't streaming forever and ever. You couldn't do a search for Ben 20 years later and be like, oh, my God. If he had been on the Ricky Lake show, we would have been able to watch that episode right now with Ben. Yes. So now I'm disappointed he didn't do it, but I'm kidding.

[04:10] Jessica: Well, I'm glad that his potential trauma was not televised.

[04:25] Meg: My engagement question.

[04:27] Jessica: I'm so ready.

[04:29] Meg: You've been in therapy? That's not a question.

[04:36] Jessica: Excuse me. Yes, Meg.

[04:38] Meg: Okay.

[04:38] Jessica: I've been in therapy.

[04:40] Meg: And was it a good experience for you?

[04:42] Jessica: Hmm. Mixed bag.

[04:44] Meg: Not as a child.

[04:47] Jessica: I had one session as a child. This is my childhood recollection.

[04:53] Meg: Perfect.

[04:54] Jessica: So I don't know if this is accurate. I love this. Absolutely. I am not a reliable narrator.

[05:00] Meg: Yes, you are.

[05:02] Jessica: Of my experience, not of.

[05:04] Meg: And that's what we're interested in.

[05:06] Jessica: Okay, so I was not. This is actually. I wasn't a child. I was in 10th grade, and I was not doing well in school, and I had always been an A student and, you know, like, 99th percentile on everything. And my parents were like, what the actual fuck is going on here? And rather, again, like, hi, guys. This is the eighties. Let's have a moment about the eighties, rather than being like, hey, how are you feeling? What's going on with you? Like, let's take a moment to reflect. They were like, oh, you're failing. Cause you might be insane. They took me to a therapist who was an academic focused person to see why your grades were fucked up anyway. But I could tell that she was doing some other psychological assessments.

[05:57] Meg: All right.

[05:57] Jessica: And I was also miserable at the time. I was very unhappy, which no one asked me about, including the therapist. The therapist never came out and said, how do you feel? I was just, like, tested.

[06:11] Meg: Oh, my God.

[06:13] Jessica: Her verdict to me was, you know, you should really just try to have more fun. And I was like, you should really just try to have my foot up your ass, you dumb cluck. So that was my very, very first therapy experience. But then when I got to college, I was like, maybe I have other issues that I should be exploring. And Kenyon had a. A psych ward. No, they had. Totally kidding. They had, you know, the therapists in the. Whatever cottage. You know, the crazy health services. Yeah, whatever. The crazy.

[06:46] Meg: My lord.

[06:47] Jessica: These terms at Kenyon, like, all of the administrative buildings were like, crozier cottage. Okay, so it was a cottage. It was a cottage. No, but then in my adulthood, I had. I had a therapist who absolutely blew my mind. That was part of a group therapy that I very reluctantly attended but did it. And it wound up being some of the best opportunity for self assessment that I had ever had. I had other therapists who were, like, basically like someone's aunt Yeta, like, telling me what to do, which was. Never.

[07:29] Meg: Got it.

[07:30] Jessica: Good.

[07:31] Meg: My sources, Gothamist, New York magazine, the Sulivanians, which is a book by Andrew Steele, the New York Times, village Voice.

[07:43] Jessica: You went all out on this one.

[07:45] Meg: I listened to the entire friggin audiobook of the Sulivanians. I know about this subject, for better or worse.

[07:57] Jessica: Wow.

[07:58] Meg: I am so glad that I can finally tell this story and never have to talk or think about the Sullivanians ever again.

[08:07] Jessica: Oh, my God. This is like the great unburdening. Oh, my God. It's just.

[08:11] Meg: It's been in my head because it's an audiobook, too. It's been in my.

[08:14] Jessica: I don't do audiobooks for that. I only. Okay, just.

[08:18] Meg: We're doing it.

[08:19] Jessica: Okay.

[08:19] Meg: We're doing it.

[08:19] Jessica: We're doing it now.

[08:22] Meg: Okay.

[08:23] Jessica: I had too much coffee. Okay.

[08:26] Meg: In July 1985, a group of guys who had recently graduated college moved into an apartment on 100th street and Broadway. They were a rowdy bunch and didn't have much respect for their neighbors, especially the ones that lived across from them at 26 43 Broadway after one raucous night. You can picture this, right? It's sort of like they had taken their, like, college fraternity, whatever.

[08:52] Jessica: Yeah, they just entered the fraternity.

[08:53] Meg: Exactly.

[08:54] Jessica: To their apartment.

[08:55] Meg: Apartment, sure. The guys graffitied the back wall of their neighbor's building with yellow paint. They thought of it as little more than a prank. I mean, honestly, that neighborhood then, it wasn't like it was pristine.

[09:10] Jessica: Oh, I thought that you were saying they graffitied inside them.

[09:13] Meg: No, no, no.

[09:13] Jessica: They graffitied a wall, like, everyone did. Fine.

[09:17] Meg: Little did they know that their neighbors were members of a psychotherapy cult called the Sullivanians. And for the past five years, the members of this cult had become increasingly more extreme and more violent. These bozos had messed with the wrong New Yorkers.

[09:39] Jessica: These bozos messed with the wrong cult. Wow. This is not gonna be good.

[09:46] Meg: July 29, 1985. Dressed all in black and wearing stocking masks, a group of the Sullivanians broke into the guise apartment. Beat them with sticks, ripped up their mattresses, smashed their sink, toilet and tv set. After the attack, one of the guys irately marched over to the Sullivanian's apartment building and was promptly beaten up by a dozen members. One of the members broke four knuckles punching the kid in the face.

[10:18] Jessica: Oh my fucking God. Was there any face left?

[10:22] Meg: Some of the Sullivanians saw this incident as the beginning of the end of what had been a utopian experiment.

[10:30] Jessica: It sounds like they would be right.

[10:32] Meg: Saul Newton, who was not educated in medicine or psychology, founded the Sullivan Institute in 1957. His wife, Jane Pierce, was an MD and trained in psychoanalysis at New York City's respected white institute under Harry Stack Sullivan. So she does all of her schooling and she comes home to her husband and tells him what she's learned from Harry Sullivan. Harry Sullivan believed that traditional family dynamics were the root of all misery. Isn't that interesting?

[11:12] Jessica: I'm just taking that in.

[11:13] Meg: Yeah, no, please. Saul and Jane elaborated on that idea. They're talking about it at home. They're like, hmm, let's build on that. Declaring that all mothers, deep down, wanted to kill their children. So all mothers, this is their firm belief that all mothers, if your mother looks at you sideways, that's actually cause she wants to stab you. Like any kind of issue you ever had with your mother, it's like, you know, anything. Like, my mother wasn't listening to me because she was making dinner. No, actually she was plotting to kill you. Extreme.

[11:54] Jessica: Oh my.

[11:55] Meg: The only way to save the next generation was to ensure that the nuclear family was dissolved. Saul and Jane began to collect therapy patients. These patients, many of whom were artists and creatives who had come to New York open to a more bohemian life, were easy to convince that their parents didnt understand them. The next step was to make them believe that their parents were actually trying to destroy them. Saul and Jane had a solution for these disaffected cut all ties with your nuclear family and come live in one of our Upper west side apartment buildings. Because, you know, Upper west side real estate was cheap and plentiful in the seventies, and soon the Sullivanians had a number of buildings and apartments all and walking distance of each other. This is how they were set up. Men lived with men and women lived with women. And everyone was encouraged to sleep with each other frequently, but never the same person twice in a week. The fear was that people would grow attached to each other, which is the first step towards creating a family. If members suspected that others were forming what they called a focus.

[13:11] Jessica: Uh oh.

[13:13] Meg: They were urged to report them to their landlords, Saul and Jane. Heavy alcohol use was helpful, seeing as having sex with five to seven different men a week wasn't an easy sell for a lot of the women. But many found the setup liberating, especially coming out of the oppressively traditional 1950s chumship.

[13:38] Jessica: Wait.

[13:39] Meg: Chumship is the sullivanian term for close friendships. And chumship had lovely benefits.

[13:47] Jessica: I want you to know that there's something radically wrong with me, because when you said chum. Not making this up. When you said chumship, I went straight to nautical and I was like, throwing chum in the water from a ship. What are you talking about? Sorry.

[14:02] Meg: No chums. Chummy.

[14:04] Jessica: All right.

[14:04] Meg: Okay.

[14:05] Jessica: I think that's bad branding on their part, that's all.

[14:08] Meg: I think we need to always be putting this into a historical context.

[14:14] Jessica: As far as these are children of the fifties. I mean, they are the reason that, you know, I don't mean to sound facile, but the seventies was the seventies for a reason. Like, these are people who went to find themselves and having a great time without barriers.

[14:32] Meg: Right.

[14:33] Jessica: And judgment.

[14:34] Meg: The fifties were really tightly wound.

[14:38] Jessica: Yes. Well, there also wasn't any birth control. I mean, there wasn't any pill. Let's talk about. Sure.

[14:44] Meg: But also just sort of talking about the family unit.

[14:47] Jessica: Oh.

[14:48] Meg: What was expected of everybody?

[14:49] Jessica: Very rigid. Very rigid roles.

[14:51] Meg: Clear. Yes.

[14:53] Jessica: Rigid roles.

[14:53] Meg: And if you were at all artistic, good fucking luck.

[14:58] Jessica: No.

[14:59] Meg: Judy Collins was a Sullivanian. Judy Collins?

[15:03] Jessica: The singer? The singer, yeah.

[15:05] Meg: She was a Sullivanian for 15 years. This is a quote from her. I sure got a lot of mileage out of the Sullivanian belief that alcohol was good for anxiety and that having multiple sex partners was a political statement and a healthy lifestyle. Jackson Pollock became a Sullivanian because his sexual impulses and alcoholism were encouraged. Incidentally, he died in a drunk driving accident.

[15:33] Jessica: Oh, for God.

[15:33] Meg: That did not work out. Long term members who had children were pressured to send them away to boarding school.

[15:40] Jessica: Oh, God.

[15:40] Meg: Some as young as three years old. There weren't a lot of accredited schools that would take such young children. So many children were sent off to some pretty sketchy institutions. That honestly sounded to me like something out of a Charles Dickens novel. Horrific. If you wanted to have a baby and you were a Sullivanian, you had to get permission from Saul, and then he would assign you. Brace yourself, a sperm pool, which is what it sounds like.

[16:17] Jessica: No, no.

[16:20] Meg: You had to have sex with just a zillion guys.

[16:24] Jessica: So you wouldnt know, right?

[16:26] Meg: That way you and the guy, and eventually the child would never know who the father was. Because remember, the worst thing in the world is a family.

[16:35] Jessica: This is so twisted.

[16:36] Meg: Babies were raised by babysitters. Mothers were not allowed to spend more than a few hours a week with their children. Theres one story about a woman who wanted to breastfeed her child, and they were ripping the child out of her arms because the whole idea was the.

[16:56] Jessica: Bonding would be unacceptable, but also, yes.

[16:59] Meg: The bonding would be unacceptable, but to the child that it was in the best interest of the child.

[17:05] Jessica: Has anyone done a study on the children?

[17:09] Meg: I don't know about a study, but I certainly read a lot about them.

[17:12] Jessica: Then I will sit back and listen.

[17:16] Meg: So parents were convinced that spending time with their children was just selfish on their part. You're being a bad person if you want to spend time with your child. That's just you wanting things that's not in the child's best interest. And then there was the therapy. Saul anointed favorite members as anointed cause, remember, he's not accredited in anything. He's coming up with this shit right himself. He anointed favorite members as sullivanian therapists. You are a therapist. And you are a therapist.

[17:52] Jessica: Wow.

[17:52] Meg: Everyone was getting multiple hours of therapy a week. And they are paying for it, believe you me. And then there was rampant sexual misconduct in the therapy sessions. Well, of course, there was the grossest and most egregious from Saul himself. His grown daughter Esther begged Saul not to ask her friends for blowjobs during their therapy sessions. And his response was, I think you are being very bourgeois, but if thats what you want, then okay. Did he stop just for her friends, his daughters friends?

[18:37] Jessica: I have a lot of problems with this.

[18:40] Meg: The therapy was frequently psychologically abusive. Patients were told to cut all ties with their biological families, have sex with whoever asked them, and become a computer programmer to be able to afford therapy.

[18:57] Jessica: Wait, you're kidding me.

[18:59] Meg: No. See, so many of the people were, are artists. And, you know, artists don't actually make as much money maybe as computer programmers. So the therapists were like, you gotta. You gotta get another job. And they saw into the future, and they're like, I think computer programming is where the future is. So get that job. If a woman was hesitant to have sex, she was called frigid repressed.

[19:32] Jessica: Yes.

[19:33] Meg: One therapist advised his client, shut your mouth and open your legs. That was what he told her to do to solve her problem about not wanting to have sex with whoever asked her.

[19:45] Jessica: Well, it's one way to get over it. What a shit show.

[19:50] Meg: And all Sullivanians were convinced that they couldn't survive without therapy. And to be honest, if they displeased Saul, they would be homeless. Now we get back to, like, you're not on a farm in Ohio where you can just, like, hitchhike out of there. You're in New York City. Where are you gonna go?

[20:13] Jessica: No. Well, from the beginning of your story today, the first thing I thought was, of course, they're getting people. It's real estate based.

[20:23] Meg: It.

[20:23] Jessica: That's the easiest way to get people in New York City to do anything that you want is to say, I'll give you an apartment. Like, seriously. So. Ugh. Feh.

[20:35] Meg: So what? Oh, and they've broken ties with their family.

[20:39] Jessica: So where are they gonna go?

[20:41] Meg: Right? They're gonna be homeless in New York City. So what started as a socialist movement became a business run by a fascist. Some former Sullivanians likened the progression to animal farm.

[20:55] Jessica: Interesting.

[20:56] Meg: Yeah. Saul ousted Jane. Remember Jane, who actually did know something about psychotherapy?

[21:04] Jessica: His wife.

[21:05] Meg: Yeah.

[21:05] Jessica: Okay. Divorce.

[21:07] Meg: Yeah, he divorced her. He was married, I think, all told, five times. I think she was the third. But, yeah, he got rid of her, and he remarried. See, he was allowed to marry and live with his children, of course. Yeah. And the hypocrisy and control and general crazy just got worse. His new wife was the actress Joan Harvey, who had been on the soap opera the edge of night.

[21:33] Jessica: Okay.

[21:35] Meg: She started a political theater company.

[21:38] Jessica: No, no, I know. I was like, that's embarrassing.

[21:45] Meg: The fourth wall theater on East Fourth street. And it was actually housed where New York theater workshop is now.

[21:52] Jessica: Interesting.

[21:53] Meg: Remember how Sharon Ganz's cult. We did another cult story. She started a theater in San Francisco. I'm like, it's very unsettling, Jessica, to hear, being a theater person, how theater kind of gets swept up in these cult stories. But also not surprising. It was a coercive and manipulative organization. The fourth wall theater. Members were required to volunteer to help run the theater.

[22:19] Jessica: They were required to volunteer to volunteer.

[22:23] Meg: Or they'd be kicked out of the cult. And remember, if you get kicked out of the cult, where are you going? You're living in Central park. And then the eighties happened. The nuclear meltdown at Three Mile island in Pennsylvania. John Lennon's assassination and fear of contracting aids sent the group into a tizzy. Members were no longer allowed to be friends with anyone outside the group or eat food that wasn't prepared by a group member, Joan was sure she was going to be assassinated. So security teams were put in place and were eager to rough people up, like former members who wanted to kidnap their own children back from the group. A couple of kidnappings took place. A couple dads sued to get their small children away from the cult. In one case, a dad who was a former member picked up his five year old son from boarding school so he could live with him. Then the mother, avid Zylvanian, kidnapped the child back from the dad just so she could take him back to the horrific boarding school. But see, she was doing this all for his benefit. I mean, these people's minds messed up. All the defections and custody battles and Saul's deterioration due to Alzheimer's led to the group's disbanding in 1991. And Saul's funeral that year was barely attended. Now, what I'm interested in talking about in this TED talk on the Sullivan game.

[24:06] Jessica: Okay. I'm so upset about these babies that were put in boarding school. There are so many things to be upset about with the story, but that.

[24:17] Meg: Well, just to put your mind at.

[24:19] Jessica: Ease, how can that happen?

[24:22] Meg: They actually started talking to each other and they created a community with each other. Like, that was so fucked up.

[24:31] Jessica: But you're talking about these babies grew up and found each other.

[24:34] Meg: The babies grew up and found each other. And they were like, whoa, that was messed up.

[24:40] Jessica: How did you like boarding school at five? I don't know. I was precognizant.

[24:46] Meg: I mean, yeah, they really were raised by wolves.

[24:49] Jessica: Yeah, yeah, right. Speechless and angry.

[24:52] Meg: So. And we've talked about cults have come up here and there on the podcast. This was a hot mess cult. It has a lot in common with other cults that we've talked about. What I thought was particularly interesting about this story was the psychotherapy angle. And all of this mother hating, I thought was particularly interesting. And the idea of being repressed or frigid. You said frigid. That was definitely a word that was used a lot in that time period. I'm like, what is the progression there?

[25:30] Jessica: Did anyone do a deep dive on Saul's background? Did he hate his mother?

[25:35] Meg: Yes, he hated his mother.

[25:37] Jessica: So this was an expression of Saul's madness.

[25:40] Meg: Did Freud hate his mother? I mean, there does seem there is a seed there in psychotherapy about moms being the root of the problem.

[25:49] Jessica: Well, Medea, it really is always the mother. And I would imagine that inherent in that is this is gonna come out sounding strange, but people hate women.

[26:06] Meg: That's my point exactly.

[26:07] Jessica: People hate women. And, you know, sorry, but that is my point. Men hate women and women hate women. And it is the answer, I think, for why they're so, like, why forward motion is so difficult and why it's very easy to say if something is wrong. The first primal bond for anyone is with their mother. So it must be the mother's fault. It's baked into our psyche. So did it start with Freud? 1000% not.

[26:39] Meg: It didn't start with Lenny. But we are talking about New York City in the eighties when psychotherapy was really popular.

[26:50] Jessica: Were people, I don't know the answer to this. Were people, was freudian therapy very still very hot in the eighties?

[26:58] Meg: Psychoanalysis, I mean. Yeah, very much so. And more in New York than anywhere else in the country. Absolutely.

[27:05] Jessica: I mean, like, there's the classic Philip Roth style, you know, Portnoy's complaint, the joke being that the entire book is him unloading his mother hatred and his sexual insanity. And at the very end, the last line is the therapist saying, and now we begin.

[27:21] Meg: Okay, I'll just say two more thoughts that I had. I do think it's interesting, this whole utopian experiment in social liberation slipping into totalitarianism. It's animal farm. I just thought that was so fascinating. It's all like, oh, no, we don't need a leader. We don't want a leader. We want to live freely. We want to be able to, you know, we don't want any rules. And somehow without a power vacuum or, sorry, with a power vacuum, somebody's gonna take advantage of that and it's gonna be even worse than how it started.

[27:59] Jessica: Well, I mean, I think that the fact that that is actually the default setting is a very interesting thing for us to talk about in the future, not right now. But human nature is fundamentally unchanging, and there will always be the followers, and there will always be the leaders. And in that group of leaders, there will be a sociopath. And there you go.

[28:25] Meg: Yeah, but one more thing.

[28:27] Jessica: Go ahead.

[28:28] Meg: Okay, so social liberation, like, someone argued that releasing women from the obligation to mother was a form of freedom, right? So now, coming out of the fifties, you actually don't have to be a mother. You can be whoever you want. Because, look, the nuclear family is patriarchal by design, right? So this should be.

[28:51] Jessica: Yes, but Saul will tell me what to do. And that's.

[28:53] Meg: No, hold on, though.

[28:54] Jessica: That's not patriarchal.

[28:55] Meg: Hold on, hold on, hold on. So this is great. This is a great situation for women, correct? Except for all the baked in misogyny, that's the problem. And then it turns into, this is what Jackson Pollock said about his mother. That old womb with a built in tomb. That's what he said about his mother.

[29:17] Jessica: Well, Jackson Pollock was a very, very disturbed individual. But you're right. You've said this a few times during this segment that we've talked about a lot of these issues before, and it's no surprise that they come up over and over and over again. We are two women looking at the last 40 years through the lens of women and able to see what has changed and what has not. And it's very sobering to be, I think, at a stage in our lives, and I've seen or spoken to other Gen X women who feel this way, that. And we talked about this earlier today, like, we thought that we had evolved past what our mothers dealt with. There is no evolution.

[30:10] Meg: I feel like I keep getting fooled into thinking there's progress.

[30:14] Jessica: I think there is progress, but I think that the increments are very small, and it is taking a very long time. And there are fake outs with things like me, too, where there's a frenzy of support for a week. Yeah. And then it's like, I'm bored. I'm these women's issues again. Meh.

[30:39] Meg: Well, thank you for, like, releasing me from the fucking cell of your.

[30:42] Jessica: You know what? I'm so glad you've been birthed over. You've been birthed, but now you have to birthed out, but now you have to go to boarding school. So, Meg.

[31:04] Meg: Yes?

[31:04] Jessica: Here's your engagement question.

[31:06] Meg: Okay.

[31:06] Jessica: Do you have a favorite cocktail?

[31:09] Meg: Yeah, I like a margarita. I like a margarita with ice and lots and lots of salt. They never put enough salt. I like lots of salt on my margarita.

[31:22] Jessica: Do you remember the first time you had a margarita?

[31:25] Meg: No, but I used to do, like, frozen margaritas, which is really trashy.

[31:32] Jessica: I mean, that's just the drink of youth, isn't it? It's a slushie.

[31:35] Meg: Right? And then I started going to restaurants that were like, we don't do frozen margarita.

[31:42] Jessica: Like, this isn't signor frogs.

[31:44] Meg: Oh, my God.

[31:45] Jessica: Come on. I was so embarrassed, so I had.

[31:46] Meg: To get used to a more elevated version of my favorite cocktail.

[31:50] Jessica: Well, I'm gonna start by telling you a story. During our little break, you were telling me that a friend of the BFF of the podcast had sent in some ideas for you, and I was incensed because this person should be contacting me with ideas, because not only is it BFF of the cast, but my BFF, Nick. Yes.

[32:16] Meg: So it was his idea to do the Sullivanians.

[32:21] Jessica: Nicholas. Anyway, but I will tell you a cute, quick little story that one of the wonderful things about being friends with Nick is that, like me, Nick has a great love for old New York. And we have attended the closings of famous restaurants when they were on their last legs and the only other patrons had oxygen tanks. We were very, very enamored with hotel bars, old hotel bars, and we shared a great love for living a life of the fifties and sixties in New York.

[33:00] Meg: And it's easy to do that kind of like time and again. You can go back in time in New York.

[33:05] Jessica: You can. Exactly. And so one time Nick had the grand idea, and I believe this was in the late eighties, that we should go to Trader Vic's. Ooh, love. Which used to be in the lower. In the basement of the Plaza Hotel entrance on 59th street, right across from the park. It had been there for so long that it was taken for granted that it would be there forever. Trader Vicks. Iconic.

[33:35] Meg: It's like getting rid of the Empire State building.

[33:38] Jessica: Exactly. And for those who are not in the know, Trader Vicks was one of the very first tiki bars that became a place to see and be seen by the sort of people who would go to Truman Capote's black and white ball. It was preppy, it was very campy. It was for the people who, you know, winter in Honolulu, you know, snowbirds, bon vivant. So we decided to go. And it was because we were so young, it still had the magic. We could see the magic of what it was in reality.

[34:17] Meg: Oh, no.

[34:18] Jessica: It was tired, it was down at heel. And yet there was still a magical moment because there we were drinking mai tais and eating crab rangoon. I still don't even know what that is exactly. But there was also crab and cream cheese in a fried wonton.

[34:37] Meg: I would do that in a.

[34:39] Jessica: It was a.

[34:41] Meg: It was amazing.

[34:42] Jessica: No, no, it was a. And our waitress, who I know that Nick will listen to this and he will have a moment, our waitress name, and we will never forget it as long as we live, was Mitzi. And if you're going to. Yes, it was. If you're going to be in a fifties, sixties at its heart era tiki bar, if you're not served by Mitzi, you're short changed. Mitzi also looked like she was ready to go. She's like, am I on my eternal break yet? Please. Mitzi was not forced into a sarong. She was wearing a hawaiian shirt, so thank God for that. But anyway, so Trader Vic's in the Plaza Hotel was one of my time travel moments. And, in fact. Cause, you know, I collect old books. At one point, I ran across, like, very randomly, the close, if not a first edition, like, close to copy of Trader Vick's Book of Food and drink, which I'm holding in my hand right now. Beautiful. And we'll put it on the instagram because the spine of the book has palm trees on it, and it has a roast pig on the front. I'm going to just read you the table of contents. So it's Trader Vick's book of Food and Drink with an introduction by Lucius Beebe, watercolor illustrations by Guy Huzze, published by Doubleday and Company in 1946. The dedication is dedicated to those merry souls who make eating and drinking a pleasure, who achieve contentedness long before capacity, and who, whenever they prove able to carry it, enjoy it and remain gentlemen from Trader Vic. Nice about booze, which is cocktail recipes about parties, how to have a feast in Tahiti, a luau on the mainland.

[36:44] Meg: Okay, so he's also giving advice. It's a guidebook.

[36:48] Jessica: It's a guide to the best tiki living, including recipes about food in general. And this is about zombies. This serves about 60 people. There has been much argument about the origination of the zombie, but credit should be given where credit is due. Don, the beachcomber of Hollywood, Chicago, and anywhere in the South Pacific is the originator of this famous drink. Only he can give you the original recipe, but I can give you my version elsewhere. In this volume, you will find a formula for a single drink, which we will do, ma'am. Okay.

[37:27] Meg: What? Can you give me a visual of what a zombie looks like?

[37:31] Jessica: Well, he's dead.

[37:32] Meg: Oh, I thought it was a drink.

[37:34] Jessica: No, it is. I'm kidding. I was just joking with you. Oh, I get it. You're dying.

[37:42] Meg: Dad joke.

[37:43] Jessica: Yes, it was a dad joke. You know, it's like a scorpion bowl. It's like a huge drink.

[37:49] Meg: So you order it. You don't order it for two people?

[37:52] Jessica: No. Well, this is for 60. For a party. You can order a zombie at a bar for one of the same. No, it's like a punch bowl. What are you talking about? What's wrong with you? Do you put a straw in it? Actually, yes. I told you I need a visual. Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. One of the many ways that a zombie can be served. Actually, yet again, Nick and I were at a tiki bar in the eighties in Ohio.

[38:17] Meg: Oh, no.

[38:18] Jessica: And I know. And the place was called the kehiki. And it looked like a giant polynesian structure, you know, like a giant a frame. It was a giant flat bowl with a volcano in the center that was flaming with sterno. So you had like a blue flame that could basically bring the house down and the moat around that was filled with the punch. Everyone had their very long straw in the bowl at the same time. So sanitary, maybe. Not. Fun. Absolutely. And these drinks were mostly. They were booze. They were just. There was very little else going on in them. So you were rocked in about 9 seconds. Here's the recipe. If you want to make zombies for 60, 62 bottles jamaican rum, four bottles puerto rican rum, one bottle Demerara, 151 proof rum.

[39:18] Meg: Holy shit.

[39:19] Jessica: Two bottles curacao, three quarts lemon juice, three quarts orange juice, one quart grenadine, and hilariously, 2oz of Pernod. I don't know how the Pernod is going to actually make a statement. 2oz. I'm assuming that you sort of, like, wash the glass in the Pernod. Who knows? So that's trader Vicks. And that was in the Plaza Hotel. Now, Meg, we had a little argument, not an argument, really, a disagreement on a prior podcast where you said, quite rightly, that the gold and silver ball.

[39:58] Meg: Oh, yeah. Was at the Waldorf.

[40:00] Jessica: Yes. However, it was also at the plaza. It moved. The party moved. You can look at me as skeptically as you like. Okay?

[40:10] Meg: Tell the story.

[40:10] Jessica: But I'm telling you that this is the research, and you know that if I have done some research, I am going to wave that flag like nobody's business. So don't give me the stink eye, please. So anyway, and this is, by the way, from 1987 from the New York Times. And there were some quotes in here from kids who went to gold and silver ball. And I just thought it was so damn funny that I had to share it with you. And I'm going to say it as though I were an eighties teenager. The title of this article is black satin and braces, an eighties teenage ball. For the most part, the $145 plunked down by their parents for each ticket was the extent of the guest's involvement with the league that was benefiting from their funds. Fair. Even the plagues of their own privileged set anxieties about college admissions, unrequited love, the specter of AIDS, and fears about their parents finances after the stock market collapse seemed far from their minds. I feel like that paragraph has encapsulated our entire podcast.

[41:17] Meg: Good Lord. And it was written in 1980, 719 87.

[41:22] Jessica: And I'm going to now quote, we just want to dance, have fun, and seek out gorgeous guys, said Heidi Zucker, a 16 year old junior from Ridgewood High School in New Jersey. I don't know how Heidi got in. Who shopped, quote, for like 8000 hours before finding her dress at Bloomingdale's that morning. I don't buy that. Most of those attending appreciated the more current surroundings this year at the palladium, now considered by some nightclub goers to be passe. Not everyone was swept up by the gaiety surveying the dance floor. Brett Livingston, a senior at Choate Rosemary hall in Wallingford, Connecticut, who'd just got into Harvard, quote, early action, said, quote, there's a false tranquility here. With all of the authority of an 18 year old who got in early. There's a false tranquil. Okay, I'll do it. Like, okay, Brett. Sorry, Brett, there's a false tranquility here. The carefree eighties, they're all acting like adults. Older, happy. But what about the future after Reagan? He's such a screwball. No one knows. But for Julie McDonald, a Choate sophomore from Georgia, it was a night to remember. It was a really stuck up prep school thing to do. But it was cool, she said, leaving for the plaza where she and two classmates had a room. This atmosphere is so modern. It's us.

[43:00] Meg: You know what? I didn't go to the gold and silver senior year. Cause I was dating Ed.

[43:05] Jessica: I remember ed. And we trinity ed.

[43:08] Meg: Yes. Instead we went to the Trinity prom. We didn't do the golden sun.

[43:12] Jessica: Oh, I remember you went to a prom.

[43:14] Meg: But yeah, so I. My gold and silver experiences were pre 87.

[43:20] Jessica: I have to talk about an eighties prom with you.

[43:23] Meg: Yeah. Oh my God. I could talk.

[43:26] Jessica: To my absolute shock, I went to a prom in Philadelphia. In Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia. You too?

[43:34] Meg: Mine was in New Jersey. Have I told the. No, I told this story on the podcast my grandmother set me.

[43:39] Jessica: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like a lord.

[43:42] Meg: And I brought poor Amanda with me, and we were fish out of water.

[43:47] Jessica: Well, get a load of this.

[43:49] Meg: Not a good scene.

[43:51] Jessica: So picture it Sicily, 1942. Picture it, 1988, suburbs of Philadelphia. My friend who was a year younger than, not a year my age, but a year behind me in school, was graduating from his giant public high school. He had always liked me, and I was always like, I'm just gonna ignore that this is even happening. So we're friends. And to my absolute, not horror, but mild dismay, he asked me to be his prom date. I really did love him very, very dearly. So there was no question that I was. Of course I was going to go. So I am now dressed, ready to go at his parents place in a black Betsy Johnson bustier dress.

[44:41] Meg: Love it.

[44:42] Jessica: With the hook and eye closure.

[44:43] Meg: I have that fucking dress.

[44:45] Jessica: The strapless one?

[44:46] Meg: No, no, mine has strap.

[44:47] Jessica: Mine was strapless. And, you know, from the neckline to the waist hook, and I. And your skin was exposed.

[44:55] Meg: Yeah, no, no. It was super sick. I still have that dress.

[44:59] Jessica: See, that fills me with envy, because I wish I still had my dress. I'm very, very, you know, you get a lot of money for that dress, by the way, in the vintage market. And it had, you know, like, a pointed waistline to the front and then a long gathered skirt. So that's what I'm wearing. And I have very big eighties hair that I do not think is big because I am not from the suburbs, and I'm not using hairspray, but my hair is naturally so big. Like, there's so much of it. And it was very long. So I looked. I was fitting the part right? So I thought, my friend shows up, and a car shows up, and he presents me. And now this is where I began to want to fly off the face of the planet. As a New Yorker, I had no experience with the. A plastic clamshell case opened to a wrist corsage on an elastic. On a sparkly elastic.

[45:58] Meg: I didn't even know what a corsage was until a New Jersey promotion.

[46:02] Jessica: I knew what a corsage was. I didn't know you could wear it on your wrist. So I was like, thank you. As it was put on me, off we go to the prom. And it could not be more unlike our world.

[46:18] Meg: Yeah.

[46:19] Jessica: And the thing that I will never forget, and of course, it was in some hotel in a giant ballroom, and there's a dj, and all the kids were in there, like, shitty finery and all of that. But there was one boy who was wearing a white tuxedo with a white top hat and a large, full length white cane and white capezios. And it was not ironic. Yes. And I was just. I remember standing in this hotel and turning to my friend and being like, is that a thing? And he was like, yeah, look around you. And then I did. No. Oh, this is a thing. Oh, okay.

[47:08] Meg: I kind of feel like we might have told this story before on the podcast, but whatever.

[47:12] Jessica: Who cares. Put it. Do it again.

[47:14] Meg: But, you know, obviously we wanted to get home.

[47:18] Jessica: Please, God.

[47:19] Meg: And the guys, they were super excited to, like, blow off this prom and go to the city. And we're like, that sounds great because that's how we get home. Fantastic. But then they had a white limo.

[47:34] Jessica: And you were like, I'm not getting in that fucking thing. Are you insane?

[47:38] Meg: Looked at each other like, we can't get into a white legacy.

[47:49] Jessica: Well, I think, you know, again, if you want to talk about Upper east side kids with eighties mores, it was literally like, I might have to walk home from New Jersey on bloody stumps by the time I make it to the Upper east side. Because that, friends, is a white limousine. The very nature. Like, I would imagine that we would have thought at the time that a white limousine, like, you get in it and you magically go to queens. Like you, or you magically have to stay in New Jersey or some other, like. Or you go to, like, five towns, like, it's just going to spirit you off to exactly like your. And I have your privileged little shitty worst nightmare.

[48:36] Meg: It did not bring out the best in Amanda or me.

[48:40] Jessica: We were you standing in the corner like, oh, my God, this is so tacky. We, oh, my God, we're not good.

[48:46] Meg: Dates to these come like, strangers. Don't set people up.

[48:52] Jessica: Well, that's also the terrible thing about being a teenager is, like, my grandmother told me I have to go to the prom with you. My mother told me I had to go to the prom.

[48:59] Meg: Why? Because you couldn't get a date? This is not a good.

[49:03] Jessica: How is this my problem?

[49:04] Meg: This is not going to end with.

[49:06] Jessica: How is this my problem? So what I wanted to talk about, the reason I am talking about the plaza is that I ran across an article. So I just was kind of, like, feeling nostalgic about the plaza. So I was doing my research and I was like, oh, yeah, trader Vicks. And, oh, you know, I can finally say, there wasn't that the gold and silver. Ha ha ha. And then I came across this article. I know I'm vindictive and petty, okay? And this is an article from 1988 from the New York Times. And this is how it begins. Donald Trump charges up a staircase, kicks open a fire door, and greets the blinding summer sun. Surrounded by heavy set bodyguards wearing gold plated tees on their lapels, he stands 18 stories above Fifth Avenue on the roof of the Plaza Hotel. Trump is on a flying inspection tour of his latest acquisition, searching for ways to squeeze more profit out of the hotel, Ivana was doing a lot to make the plaza happen. She did all of the design.

[50:17] Meg: She did all of the design, all of the work she did.

[50:20] Jessica: And he was, what he said about her to the press was so vulgar that.

[50:28] Meg: So dismissive, so dismissive that even his.

[50:30] Jessica: Colleagues made him apologize in print, which was that he was paying her in dresses.

[50:37] Meg: Yeah. No. Horrible. Really.

[50:39] Jessica: Piece of shit. But what I loved about this article and what it taught me was that Trump's whole thing, and here we are in the eve jury selection, is happening with his criminal trial.

[50:48] Meg: You know what? Yesterday was at six.

[50:50] Jessica: At six. Oh, I only got to the news when it was at six.

[50:53] Meg: It's at seven, but it might even be higher than that now.

[50:56] Jessica: Well, and, you know, the art of the deal and all of that nonsense. And the plaza really was his moment where he went from being a developer from Queens to having a status symbol property.

[51:14] Meg: Right.

[51:14] Jessica: And it was what made him, and what he wanted to do, obviously, was to align himself with the illustrious people, the Astors, the Vanderbilts, who had famously been there for the opening of the Plaza Hotel. Yeah, not gonna happen. Because what happened was, as I've said on earlier podcasts, he draped the entire thing in gold, which is. That's the end of it. However, what I really loved about this article was that he wanted to get a really good deal. And what this article exposed in 1988 was that he was had. The people who owned the Plaza hotel orchestrated a deal where they had him on the ropes, and he wanted it so badly, they actually got him to do a ridiculous, stupid deal. But it made me so happy to realize that in 1988, in this, his great moment of glory, the New York Times was like, you're an idiot.

[52:18] Meg: That's not a good deal.

[52:19] Jessica: Not a good deal. Just to put this in context, why he would be susceptible, quote, he has it all now. The flashy hotels and condos, the casinos, the 727 jet, the 300 foot yacht, the 118 room mansion on the ocean in Palm beach. What Trump wants, Trump gets. But this moment is special. He has never wanted anything quite so much as the plaza. It has been his obsession for more than a decade. Because, as he says, this isn't just a building, it's the ultimate work of art. I was in love with it. And there was another reason. The $400 million purchase of the legendary hotel conferred upon Donald J. Trump and his glitzy empire, a social cachet beyond price. I tore myself up to get the plaza. Trump says, poor little boy.

[53:15] Meg: Yes.

[53:15] Jessica: So there was a crazy crazy auction of the Plaza Hotel. It started in 1987. And the reason this article begins the way that it does, is this is the first time that Trump walks into his own new property. And of course, he kicks a door down. That's as bad as I don't know if you remember. Of course you do. Iron Chef, that show. And Bobby Flay was one of the iron chefs, and he was vilified. It was the beginning of the downfall of Bobby Flay because he was so grotesque and vulgar when he won one of the challenges that he jumped up onto the counter on top of his own cutting board, and all of the other chefs were like, interesting. You don't do that. And it was like, oh, you're trash.

[54:06] Meg: That's that chef law.

[54:08] Jessica: Chef law. It would be more than a year before Donald Trump gained control of the plaza, and it would not come easily or cheaply. So what happened was, in brief, Bob Bass owned the Plaza Texas.

[54:25] Meg: Yeah.

[54:25] Jessica: No, you know who that is? The bass is. Okay. And he had a fabulous attorney. His amazing attorney was Tom Barrack. And here's the basic deal that happened. They bought the plaza for $350 million. They, because of who they were. And the collateral that it was known that Bass had, they got the financing for no collateral, no liquid, nothing. Just they got $350 million, 300 to buy the plaza, and then another 50 million to refurbish it. Then a war began when it became known and Barack knew that Trump wanted the plaza that badly, and so he homed in on him. Cut to. They negotiated a deal where Donald Trump was going to have to pay $450 million. Quote. Details of the intricate negotiations were leaked out to the press. On Saturday, February 27, the New York Times reported the possible sale of the plaza to Pulevsky's group, who was competing with Trump. The same day Donald Trump called Barack to get back in the running, they agreed to meet in Trumps office on Tuesday morning. Several participants in the Plaza deal believed that directly or indirectly, Barack was responsible for the newspaper coverage that pressured Trump into doing the deal. Quote, Tom played Donald like a Stradivarius, says a real estate executive familiar with the deal. Quote, the Times story really softened Trump up. Trump, however, insists that the article had, quote, no effect on him. Very interesting, says Trump. When I was buying in Brooklyn and Queens, I'd know every screw and bolt before I bought. But that's an income investment, not an art investment. If you have to check each room in the plaza, you shouldn't be buying it, says Bernstein. Trump wasn't Trump in this deal. Normally, we'd tear property like this apart. So he wanted to do a lot of things to make this thing make money. He didn't do it. He did not succeed. One of the things he wanted to do was to make the Palm court into a giant atrium, like a Trump plaza. Anyway, he couldn't do it. But one of the things that he wanted to do was to make the bottom, the basement into a food court, which he did. And that was why Trader Vicks lost its lease. That was the end. Donald Trump was the end, was the gilding of the Plaza Hotel and the end of Trader Vic's because, and this is the best last line I can give you. He thought it was tacky.

[57:20] Meg: I know we always say that everything comes back to real estate.

[57:23] Jessica: It really does.

[57:24] Meg: Stories really do come back to real estate.

[57:26] Jessica: Well, I mean, it is one of the most notable features of New York City.

[57:31] Meg: We're an island.

[57:33] Jessica: We are a limited amount of space. And how you got your apartment where you live, all of that always makes a good story because it's so hard to get where you want to be or get what you need. It's not for the faint of heart. And so even, and forget being a fancy person, any human being on the island of Manhattan has to jump through ridiculous hoops to get a freaking apartment. It's ridiculous. I mean, and that's the other thing about New York is that that COVID has really fucked with is that we have always been a culture of entertaining outside of the home. Restaurants, bars, whatever. It's a go out city. Like, for example, so I was in Ohio visiting my dear friend and saw his sister in her glorious house. And the entire house is set up to entertain. You know, like, there's this barbecue area. There's this, like, it's all about inviting people into your home. If you have a shitty apartment, there's no need to entertain there because you can go down to the corner and there's a perfectly lovely place to sit and do. Yes, that's whatever.

[58:47] Meg: New York is an extension of our tiny apartments.

[58:49] Jessica: Exactamundo.

[58:51] Meg: Hey, everybody, I'm gonna be traveling and Jessica has a lot of work stuff lined up, so we're gonna take next week off, but we will see you again in May.