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

[00:18] Jessica: And I'm Jessica. 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

[00:27] Meg: podcast about New York city in the 80s. I do ripped from the headlines.

[00:31] Jessica: And I do pop culture.

[00:32] Meg: It is a gorgeous day out.

[00:34] Jessica: It is.

[00:34] Meg: And can I give you a little bit of great news that I think might warm you?

[00:39] Jessica: Oh, yes, please.

[00:41] Meg: So you know I have my rooftop garden.

[00:43] Jessica: Yes. Pea sprouts. Stop.

[00:46] Meg: I. I planted.

[00:47] Jessica: You're a farmer. I am. You are a bonafide farmer. That's amazing.

[00:54] Meg: We've got broccoli up there and eventually peas, astonishment, mint and all kinds of stuff. But, yeah, it was just so exciting.

[01:02] Jessica: You know, you need to do next year, you need to start cultivating bees on the roof.

[01:07] Meg: I have thought about it. I don't know if my neighbors would be psyched about that.

[01:13] Jessica: Well, the reason I'm thinking about it is that I was up on my roof where there are always flowering plants and there were tons of bees. And I was like, the bees are back.

[01:25] Meg: You know what I can do? I think you get ladybugs in the fall.

[01:29] Jessica: Yes.

[01:30] Meg: Okay. I should order some ladybugs.

[01:32] Jessica: Why?

[01:33] Meg: To release them on the roof.

[01:35] Jessica: Just to be cute?

[01:36] Meg: No, I think they're. They're helpful with the. With the plantings in some way. I think so.

[01:41] Jessica: They're industrious.

[01:42] Meg: I think so. I think they do something.

[01:44] Jessica: You know what? I'm all in. Whatever they do, they're cute and they're very cute. I noticed that there was a little gap in the sealant on one of my windows in my bedroom because I had hired someone to do, like, a deep clean of my apartment. There was a ladybug graveyard inside the window. There's so many ladybugs that had found their final resting place inside the window frame.

[02:13] Meg: Bizarre.

[02:14] Jessica: I know. And I was just like.

[02:15] Meg: And you're high up.

[02:16] Jessica: I know.

[02:17] Meg: They must be coming from the roof somehow.

[02:19] Jessica: They must be so fascinating. To your point. They must have something to do with plants. Okay.

[02:26] Meg: We are just making connections.

[02:28] Jessica: This is the most city person conversation in this. Ladybugs must have something to do with nature. No, not possible.

[02:39] Meg: You know, there have been some owls spotted. I saw that on the news.

[02:43] Jessica: Really?

[02:44] Meg: Yeah. A whole group of them. Whatever a group of owls is called.

[02:47] Jessica: A hoot.

[02:49] Meg: I. I don't know.

[02:49] Jessica: But they.

[02:50] Meg: They exist and people are very excited about it.

[02:53] Jessica: Have you seen on. Because this is the crap I look At. On Instagram, it's always, like, cute animal stuff. Have you seen owl's legs? And them running?

[03:05] Meg: I can imagine.

[03:06] Jessica: Is it a dude? Thick and covered in feathers? They're, like, really unexpected and. No, no longer. And you're like, what the shit is this? Just. He's like.

[03:18] Meg: Like, you're like, flamingo.

[03:20] Jessica: No, no, no. Somewhat in proportion. Like, not flamingo y. But like, imagine if an owl was a person and they're always, like, sitting back on their butt, right? But then they stand up and you're like, you have big, thick, meaty feather legs. What is happening here? So you have to find it crazy. Yes. I found it both alarming and adorable. And then watching them kind. They go fast and they kind of waddle at the same time.

[03:49] Meg: You're sure this isn't, like.

[03:51] Jessica: No, it's not a spoof? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. There's. There's a different thing.

[03:56] Meg: Because I actually, brief period of time, thought that haggis was a cute little animal that lived in Scotland. It's not.

[04:03] Jessica: That's. No, you've not eaten haggis.

[04:06] Meg: I mean, I didn't make this connection. The little creatures were so cute on the Instagram page. I was like, oh, look at the little haggis.

[04:13] Jessica: Are you kidding? What were they, like, tribbles? Like, little round, fuzzy things?

[04:18] Meg: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

[04:20] Jessica: That's odd. Interesting. I wanted to believe my favorite thing was. You're asking if it was a joke? There's a video of an eagle, I think, walking around, and they animated it so they put arms on the eagle. The music that they did was from. What was the. The thing that the guys from south park did? Something World Police.

[04:44] Meg: I don't know.

[04:44] Jessica: And it was like, America, Fuck. Yeah. And it was wearing a MAGA hat and, like, had guns. Disturbing. And it was wearing a muscle T. It was the funniest thing I've seen in forever. I'll find it for you.

[04:57] Meg: Fun.

[04:59] Jessica: You're, like, fun and weird. Stop now.

[05:02] Meg: Okay, I have another piece of good news.

[05:04] Jessica: Okay.

[05:05] Meg: Remember last week I was talking about the E. Jean Carroll documentary, Ask E. Jean, and I mentioned how it wasn't on streaming services because everyone was too scared. Well, Amazon prime has buckled to the pressure. I mean, it's totally up for an Oscar. So, like, somebody's gotta start distributing it, and Amazon prime is going to start distributing it on October 15th. So you just have.

[05:32] Jessica: Don't give me a reason to like Bezos and Sanchez.

[05:35] Meg: Oh, no, no. We don't have to like them. But we do like it being accessible.

[05:39] Jessica: Yes, we definitely love that.

[05:41] Meg: It is fantastic.

[05:43] Jessica: Go, Eugene, go.

[05:44] Meg: As I mentioned last week, marvelous. So we've talked, obviously, about housing many a time.

[06:02] Jessica: Let me just say something before we even get into that. Can I tell you how much I love the second that hangs in the air, right before you start speaking and saying something to me. And I know that there's an engagement question coming because you look at me and then you narrow your eyes and you kind of squint at me, and you're like. So you know, like, what's going to come of this?

[06:27] Meg: Now, you've discussed different apartments that you've had, really cool places that you've lived in. I loved your apartment, your other apartment on Lexington Avenue. That was a beautiful atelier.

[06:40] Jessica: Oui.

[06:41] Meg: And then you lived in Brooklyn.

[06:43] Jessica: The Williamsburg loft was definitely like, that was some phenomenal stuff.

[06:49] Meg: Manaz lived in a really cool Brooklyn loft for a while. That was kind of incredible. She had a few roommates, but the space was just ginormous. It's like they echoed. You wouldn't even know somebody else was there, except that, you know, they were sometimes in the kitchen of the same.

[07:06] Jessica: Which is always the goal in life, isn't it?

[07:08] Meg: Right?

[07:09] Jessica: Let it be like, no one's here.

[07:11] Meg: And I know when you moved from Lexington. This is my engagement question. Housing insecurity. Like, when you had to move from Lexington, would you have stayed there forever? Did you have to leave? Do you remember?

[07:25] Jessica: So here's what happened. They raised my rent. It was not rent stabilized. And so they must have wanted to do further upgrades to the apartment and flip it for much more money. So they raised my rent by, like, $700, like something nuts. And I had really wanted to stay there, but to be honest with you, I wanted to stay there for the wrong reasons. Like, I had gotten through my divorce, and I. I just needed a sense of place and stability, and that apartment felt like that's what it was. But of course, once I was in a totally new place that was entirely mine, I was like, fuck that shit. This is amazing. But I was really nervous, and I found a real estate agent through a friend who helped me out. And I was like, look, I just want a shiny new apartment for the same rent that I was paying. What can you find? And miraculously, like, I had never considered living above 96th Street. And miraculously and hilariously, if you go one block above, the rents plummet. Like, literally one block. And so he got me this totally fabulous apartment, but I was really nervous like, very, very worried about having to be in like scuzzoid walk up.

[08:49] Meg: Yeah. And moving is stressful.

[08:52] Jessica: Moving is hard, horrible. And it's. The younger you are, the worse it is also because you can't afford to have moving guys. Like, when I, when I left that apartment, I just hired moving guys. I was like, I'm leaving the apartment. By the time I come back, I want everything in boxes. Like, I just left. The only thing I packed were my antique books. Everything else.

[09:20] Meg: I told you this story. I hope I'm not repeating myself on the podcast. When we moved from 7th street to 23rd Street, Joe was on a work trip. The timing just sucked so bad, but there was nothing we could do about it. And so I was left to pack up the entire apartment. And I froze. I just couldn't do it. And my friend Maria, I was talking to her on the phone and she's like, how's the packing coming? And I was being kind of evasive about it and she could tell something was really dark and wrong. And she came over and just packed up the whole apartment. And I was like, well, I might want to wrap. And she's like, sit there, I'm doing the whole thing.

[10:02] Jessica: That is a true friend. I mean, that is very special.

[10:05] Meg: She could tell that I was having some kind of a panic attack. I mean, it was nuts that I hadn't even started.

[10:11] Jessica: I love that you're like, it's some kind of a panic attack. What do they say? Like, the most stressful things are moving, death and losing a job.

[10:20] Meg: What did I think was going to happen? It was already at like 10 o' clock at night and I had to get everything out by the next morning. I mean, it was crazy.

[10:28] Jessica: It was that bad. Oh my God.

[10:30] Meg: And I didn't know what to do with myself, so I just like, I was just literally frozen.

[10:34] Jessica: No, that's, that's terrifying.

[10:36] Meg: Anyway, horrible. Okay, so apartment stress, housing stress. Yes. My sources are Begging Naked, which is a documentary and the New York times.

[10:48] Jessica: Okay.

[10:49] Meg: In 1981, Elise Hill moved into the Wyoming, a pre war apartment building on 7th Avenue between 54th and 55th Streets. A block from Carnegie Hall. The Wyoming was constructed. You're going to love this because this is New York history.

[11:07] Jessica: Is this like the Dakota? It's like the sister building too.

[11:12] Meg: I mean it's much less fancy. Sister.

[11:16] Jessica: I just thought Wyoming.

[11:18] Meg: Dakota completely. So the Wyoming was constructed in 1904 with massive six bedroom apartments and was the home of upper class New Yorkers who needed full time servants to sustain their lifestyle. And those servants lived in a series of tiny rooms on the top floor of the building. Lots of Park Avenue and fifth Avenue buildings have them in the basement. But this interesting. This apartment had it on the roof,

[11:51] Jessica: by the way, as did the Dakota.

[11:53] Meg: Oh, the servant quarters are on the roof?

[11:55] Jessica: Yep.

[11:56] Meg: Interesting indeed. 77 years later, the neighborhood and building were far less swanky. And those windowless servant rooms had been empty for many years.

[12:08] Jessica: Windowless?

[12:09] Meg: Windowless.

[12:11] Jessica: Oh, that's bad.

[12:12] Meg: And they ended up just sort of using it as storage. There was just like weird crap in there. They boarded up some of them. The people who still lived in that building, nobody necessarily went up there. And there wasn't approved roof access. Now, Elise discovered these boarded up rooms, which were full of junk, like I just said, and had long been abandoned, and set about making a home for herself.

[12:39] Jessica: Wait, so how did she get into the like. So she wasn't a tenant?

[12:43] Meg: She was not a tenant. She somehow became, like, somehow found out about it and. Yeah, so she became kind of a squatter, but in a building that was a block from Carnegie Hall.

[12:55] Jessica: Right.

[12:57] Meg: It's interesting.

[12:57] Jessica: Yes. Okay.

[12:59] Meg: It would have been exceptionally tight quarters, except that she managed to expand her living space into an abandoned air shaft and even onto the roof of the Wyoming. Basically, she created kind of a pathway through a couple of these servants quarters. There was a toilet, there was a sink, but it was like a labyrinth.

[13:25] Jessica: So she knocked through the walls?

[13:27] Meg: Yes, absolutely.

[13:28] Jessica: This is genius.

[13:29] Meg: She absolutely made it her home. Covered every wall with artwork and found objects. And then she figured out how to get onto the roof. And her roof access was like a doggy door. I mean, she like squeezed herself through to get onto the roof. But then once she was on the roof. She's on the roof. She's on the roof. I mean, you know, two blocks from the park. She was a visual artist and used the space to paint and make jewelry and sculptures. Her downstairs neighbor, Sally Roth, discovered her up there and was amazed by what she had done. So Sally lives in one of these crazy apartments. I don't know if Sally was in a six bedroom apartment, they might have been split up by then. But you do in the documentary, you do see Sally's place. And I mean, it's one of those, you know, Upper west side ladies who just has lived there forever and just has all sorts of lovely things and furniture and rugs and paintings everywhere and an incredibly eclectic kitchen. And so Sally finds Elise and goes, well, aren't you interesting? And Elise invites her in this Is a quote from Sally. It was the closest I'd ever come to a 1910 Parisian atelier. I thought it was wonderful.

[14:56] Jessica: Hmm.

[14:58] Meg: It was filled with Elise's artwork, which she also sold to make money. And she didn't make waves. And none of the neighbors bothered her,

[15:07] Jessica: but they knew she was there.

[15:09] Meg: From what I gather, maybe a couple were like, what floor does she live on? You know? But she just, you know, kept her head down and just didn't make waves. And if anybody knew about it, like Sally, nobody said anything to get her in trouble.

[15:25] Jessica: Fascinating.

[15:27] Meg: So things were looking up for Elise, and it had been a rough ride for a while. She ran away from her suburban New Jersey home in 1976 when she was 15. She had no plan, but she knew a friend who went to Parsons, and she knew Parsons was on 14th Street. She had a volatile home life. She leaves with the clothes on her back.

[15:55] Jessica: Wow. Like, nothing.

[15:56] Meg: Nothing. As she walked across the George Washington Bridge, headed for.

[16:01] Jessica: Stop it.

[16:02] Meg: Headed for 14th Street.

[16:03] Jessica: Oh, my God.

[16:04] Meg: I mean, that's. That's it.

[16:05] Jessica: She walked. She walked into the city.

[16:07] Meg: She walked into the city.

[16:08] Jessica: That's amazing.

[16:09] Meg: But that's also the extent of the plan that she had. She didn't even have a ride. Right. She knew that she was going to be a sex worker. She knew it. She'd read Xavier Hollander's book the Happy hooker and figured that was as good a life as any. That night, she gave a guy a hand job for $30. All right. She made it to 14th street, but quickly realized 14th street was a big place. She. She thought she was going to 14th street, and she'd see her friend because her friend's on 14th Street.

[16:40] Jessica: Aw.

[16:41] Meg: She's 15.

[16:42] Jessica: She knew how to give a hand job, but directions were a little different.

[16:47] Meg: She never found her friend.

[16:49] Jessica: No.

[16:50] Meg: Instead, pimps found her. Her first pimp, Maurice, kept her off heroin. Hey, so that was good.

[17:00] Jessica: That's a do gooder.

[17:02] Meg: She split $150 a month in rent for an apartment at 30 Avenue B. Then she joined a brothel uptown that catered to UN people. But it wasn't long before she was taking and selling heroin. It was just there, and people were doing it. And so she started doing it, and she lost way too much weight, and she looked really sick. This is very disturbing. Her teeth were loose.

[17:32] Jessica: I know.

[17:32] Meg: It's not good. So she couldn't work as a sex worker anymore. So she checked herself into rehab in New Jersey, and while she was there, she started taking art classes. And clearly, she Had a talent. She'd always wanted to go to art school, but, you know. Right. It didn't happen for her. But now in rehab, it did. When she returned to New York, clean and sober and productive, she found the air shaft and went to work fixing it up and making jewelry and paintings and puppets, which she sold on the street. But street vending wasn't bringing in the income she needed to survive, and she was unable to secure art grants. Is very frustrating. She talks about, like, ugh, I gotta work on my resume. I mean, how do you do this? Like, she doesn't have a printer. I mean, it just doing things within a system just wasn't for her.

[18:33] Jessica: Got it.

[18:34] Meg: And in 1994, she returned to the sex industry, but this time as a stripper.

[18:40] Jessica: Wait, 94?

[18:41] Meg: Yeah.

[18:42] Jessica: Okay, wait, so when did she find the air shaft?

[18:44] Meg: 81.

[18:45] Jessica: Okay, so when you say she found. Like, how did she find the building and the whole that.

[18:51] Meg: I don't know. She doesn't talk about it, but she was there for a really long time. I mean, that was her home. And because she wasn't, you know, paying a lot of rent, her overhead. Any rent. Her overhead was so low that she managed to survive for quite a while without having to go back into the sex industry.

[19:10] Jessica: And then did she get ousted?

[19:12] Meg: No, she's still. No, she's still in the building. She's still in the building. But now she's realizing that she can't really make enough money selling her art on the street as a street vendor, so she's got to get money some other way.

[19:23] Jessica: So she goes back to, you know, for food.

[19:26] Meg: Yeah, so she goes back to sex work, but not as prostitute, as a stripper. She worked at Show World Center.

[19:33] Jessica: Ah, Robin Bird. Robin Bird's hunting ground.

[19:38] Meg: Yeah. On 42nd and 8th. One of the reasons why I wanted to tell this story this week, I've been thinking about when should I tell it, but mostly because you told the story last week. She's very much in. Now in the world of these dancers who are working in 1994. They are working near Times Square. And, you know, she's such an incredible artist, so she would do paintings of the dancers in action in full detail. So she sat next to the. Whatever you call the dance stage and would be just painting them.

[20:15] Jessica: Wow.

[20:15] Meg: And in full detail.

[20:18] Jessica: I got it.

[20:18] Meg: Yeah. Okay. And she loved dancing. She said it made her feel autonomous. Once some guy, one of the whatever, the guys who come and look at women dancing, some guy called out to her to get over here. And she snapped back at him. The guy cowered, and that was that. She was like, great.

[20:40] Jessica: She's like, okay, that's much better than being on the street.

[20:44] Meg: Absolutely. Yeah. She made her own rules.

[20:47] Jessica: Okay.

[20:47] Meg: And when she danced, she was dancing for herself, you know, and. And obviously had wonderful relationships with all the other dancers and these guys. It wasn't hard to just put them in their place. When she danced, she was in control. Like I said, autonomy was the theme for most of her life choices, which I think is why she just couldn't figure out how to work within the system to be an artist, because you kind of do have to, like, suck up a lot.

[21:15] Jessica: Well, I mean, also, if you leave home at 15 and have to walk into Manhattan, there's. You have no training about what the system even is.

[21:26] Meg: Absolutely.

[21:27] Jessica: Like, where do you even find the system?

[21:31] Meg: Selling her art on the street or applying for grants or waitressing. She's like, ugh. Never going to be a waitress or ultimately paying rent. Felt like a compromise of her independence. Now it's 1994, remember?

[21:47] Jessica: Mm.

[21:47] Meg: When Giuliani started closing the strip clubs like you talked about last week, Elise lost her income. There were only a few clubs left, and most dancers lost their jobs. She was offered a few opportunities in the sex industry, like being a dominatrix at the Vault, but nothing appealed to her like dancing. And dancing was off the table. She refused to agree to, quote, Begging Naked.

[22:17] Jessica: Ah, interesting.

[22:21] Meg: Also, in the late 90s, she didn't go back to heroin, but the crack, the cocaine. She started dropping acid.

[22:31] Jessica: Dropping acid in the 90s, and she

[22:33] Meg: started becoming paranoid and pretty unstable. She talked often about how the CIA was spying on her. And then all good things have to come to an end. She was evicted from her air shaft, and she became homeless at the age of 41. And the last frames of the documentary Begging Naked show her figuring out how to live on the streets and in shelters and in Central Park.

[23:04] Jessica: Oh, God.

[23:06] Meg: She figures it out pretty well. She's pretty optimistic. And she continues to make art out of found materials and clothing donations and gets her food from soup kitchens. That's how the film ends. Now, over the next 26 years. The next 26 years, Central park became her home. She set up a network of bird feeders in the Ramble, attracting sparrows and warblers. And she began to look more like a mountain woman than a waif. The waif she was in the 90s. She had long gray braids under her wide brim hat and wore layered woolen sweaters. Her rucksack carried her watercolors and oils and sketches, and she walked with a walking stick like she was hiking along the Appalachian Trail. She had a regular table in the corner at the boathouse outdoor cafe where she would order coffee and sit for hours painting birds and other wildlife. Quote she was a fixture. She came by the same time every day carrying a big backpack and she was always welcome. I gave her her space and she never bothered anybody. She was like family. She made us Christmas cards that were beautiful. We still have them, said Dean Pole, who ran the boathouse. Word of mouth spread and she was able to sustain herself by the sale of her intricate pointillist paintings. Quote for years she was the only person maintaining those bird feeders in the Ramble. She would spend hundreds of dollars on birdseed and sweat, said Lincoln Caram, a wildlife photographer who befriended her. She changed her name to Frances Lee Rogers, and most park regulars were familiar with her. People called her Lee. My mother saw her around all the time because she's a birder.

[25:02] Jessica: Birder.

[25:03] Meg: The rustic wooden gazebo near the boathouse became her regular spot to sleep in recent weeks. We are now in present time, current time. In recent weeks, she told friends she felt uncomfortable about Jonathan Robles, a 36 year old homeless man who started hanging around the gazebo. She had good reason to fear him. On Sunday morning, September 27, she was found stabbed and beaten to death in the gazebo. Her braids had been shaved off. Jonathan Robles turned himself into the police and admitted to murdering Lee. He's currently being psychologically evaluated. Quote I never saw her fight anyone. Always soft spoken. She was very nice, very well educated, very polite. To people she's a nobody. But to us who were regular here, she's a somebody, said her friend.

[26:00] Jessica: The minute that you talked about the birding, I was like, I know who this is. That's terrible. It's a very, very, very weird story. The Wyoming and the like. It's like, what a journey.

[26:15] Meg: What a journey. I mean, I guess her story was always rather extraordinary. The documentary starts before she starts talking a little crazy, which is also kind of interesting because it was filmed over the course of a few years. And at first she's just someone who's figuring shit out and has a past that included sex work. But then over the course of the documentary, she has to return to sex work. And then when she starts getting paranoid, you realize, oh no, this, the acid definitely unleashed some kind of mental illness here. And this is difficult as far as stability.

[26:55] Jessica: I don't even know what to say? Like, there are so many elements here that are both really cool and fascinating and admirable and also just heartbreakingly squalid and, you know, don't do drugs.

[27:11] Meg: Definitely that maybe some people, I bet a lot of people don't know that she was profiled in the Times when she was killed. She had such a huge community of people who appreciated her artwork, who took pictures, photographs, beautiful photographs of her working at the boathouse. She was a fixture in the park and, you know, the Times, good for them, decided that this particular death would not just go unnoticed.

[27:43] Jessica: Well, the thing that it actually makes me think of, as I take a second to ruminate, is that she was so well known and well regarded as a resident of the park for such a long time, and the people at the boathouse knew her and supported her. I started thinking, well, why didn't anybody help her? And then I thought, oh, because she probably didn't ask for help.

[28:09] Meg: And also, they did try to connect her recently. They had tried to connect her with somebody who could probably get her an apartment because she did sell a lot of her paintings just through word of mouth. She didn't network because, you know, she doesn't do that. But word of mouth spread, and people wanted those really cool paintings. So she had enough money. If she had somebody who could just deal with the frigging bureaucracy of it all, she could have found housing. But then it just never happened. And also, she wasn't unhappy. She had, in fact, figured out a really good place for herself. I mean, she became a Wilderness lady because she found herself living in the park. She wasn't a Wilderness lady until she moved into the park.

[28:57] Jessica: I know, I get it. And I'm just saying that what really strikes me is that there's so many stories about people who are living off the grid, they're living outside the norm. And when the question or the offer comes up, do you want to change? Do you want to do something different now, maybe more stable, more com. What would be accepted as, in quotes, normal. The answer is no, for a variety of reasons. It could be mental health. It could be drugs. It could just be. I know I am limited in some way, and I know how to operate in this way. And changing up the way that I

[29:37] Meg: operate and I don't. Is riskier.

[29:40] Jessica: Yes. And I don't trust.

[29:41] Meg: So it's. And change is hard. Like we just said, moving is very stressful.

[29:46] Jessica: It's very, very sad. And, you know, another. Yet another. I mean, the number of stories that we have told you Know that follow the path of a woman in danger, resorts to sex, work, then dies. It's like just. Oh my God.

[30:06] Meg: Not Robin Byrd.

[30:07] Jessica: No, not Robin Bird. Have you seen her artwork?

[30:11] Meg: Yes, I'll post it.

[30:12] Jessica: It's amazing.

[30:12] Meg: It's beautiful. It's absolutely beautiful. The fact that she was able to. I mean, sure, she took some classes when she was in rehab, but she is mostly self taught and self taught in so many different disciplines. They talk about that a lot in the, in the documentary, which you can also get on Amazon prime begging naked. And I'll definitely post a picture of her from that period of time.

[30:45] Jessica: To my absolute delight and I can't say shock, but mild surprise. After going down yet another rabbit hole about art in the city, I learned about a performance space that I'd never heard about. And it's really cool and I'm going to tell you about it.

[31:09] Meg: Okay, great. What is it? Sorry.

[31:12] Jessica: Calm down.

[31:13] Meg: Sorry.

[31:13] Jessica: No more caffeine for you, my friend. So In April of 1984, a new performance space opened at 118 E. First St. Which is between first and A. And it was called Derinka. Do you know about this place?

[31:34] Meg: I feel like it's come up before.

[31:36] Jessica: Well, it was a perf. He, the person who founded it liked to think of it as a performance club studio. It was opened by an actor and musician named Gary Ray. And he named it after his Croatian mother, Dorinka, which means little gift. Nice. So he came to New York. Gary Ray came to New York in 1976 to study acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. And he was also in bands, he was a bass player and he played at places like cbgb, Kenny's Castaways, Danceteria. So he was on the scene and he was really meeting a lot of people who were in the arts who were in much the same way that punk music was. I don't know how to play anything, but I'm gonna do this and we'll see what those were. The kinds of artists and performers that he was meeting outside of his acting school world. He was looking at a bunch of places. He was looking for a place to live. So apropos your story, Gary Ray needed a place to live. And as was the way at the time, he was looking for something cheap in the East Village. So he was looking around and he asked around and, you know, who knows who and whatever. And he met a landlord and he said he wanted a place where he could live and also have it as a rehearsal space for his band.

[33:06] Meg: Great.

[33:07] Jessica: The Landlord said, I don't got it, but my son has this club, but I don't like him running it. It's not good. I don't want him doing this anymore. So I have this club, and you could do with it what you want. Now, the building had originally been, or had most recently been, prior to being this kid's now failed club, an Italian social club. And it had burned down and then was rebuilt by the landlord as this club. And the club looked really cool. Like it was already all decked out. It had cool floors and it had a stage with a proscenium arch. And, you know, there was painting on the walls, so it looked kind of cool. But because it had burned down, there were all of these burned beams that had been thrown in the backyard of the space. So it looked a bit rough. There was a little room in back of the club space, the open club space. And Gary looked at all of this and he was like, I am gonna make this work, and I'm gonna do much more than just have a rehearsal space. So he goes about cleaning up the club, making it his. He decides the room in the back is just gonna be where he lives. It's also gonna be the green room for anyone who comes to perform. I know. Wow.

[34:32] Meg: He's committed.

[34:33] Jessica: He is committed. And he got his friends to come to the backyard and take all of those beams that had been piled up and lay them down flat and made a patio. So there's an outdoor space. And he. He calls the place. He's like, this is my club. It's DORINKA.

[34:52] Meg: And again, First street and Avenue B.

[34:55] Jessica: So it's 118 First street, so it's for. Yeah, first between first and A. Yeah,

[35:00] Meg: I can picture that block.

[35:03] Jessica: Yes. The only thing he had to build was a bar. This is important. Okay, okay. So he built the bar.

[35:10] Meg: Yeah. You need some income.

[35:11] Jessica: Indeed. So he opens his club. And of course, you open a club, who's gonna play like, you gotta start to attract people. And his first performer was someone who was well loved in the Eastville, the alien comic.

[35:26] Meg: I know him.

[35:27] Jessica: Oh, my God.

[35:28] Meg: Personally, how do you know him? He's passed away.

[35:32] Jessica: Tell us about the alien comic.

[35:34] Meg: He was a mainstay in avant garde downtown. The. By the time I started doing stuff in the 90s, he was avuncular, you know, but he became incredibly close to all of us. And he was lovely, lovely man.

[35:52] Jessica: I am in heaven that you responded that way. That's amazing. So he started as the first performer at Dorinka.

[36:01] Meg: So Exciting.

[36:03] Jessica: Then two guys who are performance artists, they say, you know what, we're going to do a cabaret here. They have a midnight cabaret.

[36:12] Meg: Tom Murren is the actual given name of the alien comic, by the way.

[36:17] Jessica: Good to know. So the two guys who are going to do this midnight cabaret, it's called Steve and Mark's Midnight Cabaret and Steve is Steve Buscemi. And they did a monthly cabaret with acts like Rockets, Red Glare, Ann Kohler and John Lurie. Buscemi was still a firefighter at the time as everyone was not a full time artist who was there. However, there was also a house band. The house band was they Might Be Giants.

[36:51] Meg: No way.

[36:53] Jessica: And so they had.

[36:54] Meg: What year are we right now?

[36:55] Jessica: 84. So they had had one performance at PS122 and then they met Gary Ray and he was like, come be the house band. So they had a monthly like hootenanny. And the first time that they played, they had like six people in the crowd and it was just their friends by the time the place closed three years later. So this is only three years that this place was around. They had 350 people for the first set of the night. 350 people for the second set of the night. Good God, they had blown up. And this place was absolutely their incubator. Other people who performed there were Karen Finley, Joe Andrez, Liquid Television writers like Patrick McGrath, Peter Churches and Anna Deavere Smith. The place was open Tuesday to Sunday from 7pm to 1am so the overhead was pretty low. The thing is, like a few other places we've discussed on this podcast, no alcohol license, right? So it was not a legal club. So something happened which was. It happened about a year and a half after they opened. It was in 1985. And what happened was the Palladium opened. Oh. And so the Palladium opened and it was a really big. They were getting a huge amount of press. And one of the big articles that came out was in New York Magazine. And New York Magazine wanted to talk about the proliferation of clubs in the East Village. And so they printed a map of the neighborhood with every club exactly where it was on the map.

[38:49] Meg: Now they were selling alcohol, they just didn't have a license.

[38:53] Jessica: They were selling alcohol, they didn't have a license. So what happened was that the police decided, my God, this has now been given to us on a silver platter. And they used the map to raid all of these clubs.

[39:10] Meg: Don't you have something better to do?

[39:12] Jessica: Well, apparently not. So the night that they were raided. Two guys named Andy Somalia and David west, who are performance artists, they were doing their thing, and in addition to their performance, they were handing out magic mushrooms. So everyone in the club, and there were like 40 people. It wasn't 350.

[39:37] Meg: Very scary.

[39:38] Jessica: Yes. So people were tripping balls, and Gary Ray and his buddies were packed into the paddy wagon, and off they went. Was this the end of Dorinka? No, because who's popular? They might be giants.

[39:58] Meg: Okay.

[39:58] Jessica: They decide to have a benefit at another club nearby called 8 BC, so they could pay the fines and reopen the club.

[40:07] Meg: That's the club we've talked about, 8 BC, which is a similar thing also.

[40:12] Jessica: Yes.

[40:13] Meg: You know, in that neighborhood, 8 b.

[40:16] Jessica: C. Shortly after, all of this closed. And the guy who managed it was out of a job. And Gary Ray was like, I'm not going to manage his club anymore. It's clearly not my strong suit. So he hires that guy and they reopen as a private club.

[40:35] Meg: Smart.

[40:35] Jessica: Anyone who came to the to Durinka got a membership card with their name on it. And you got it with your admission fee. And if you got the card, you had to give your personal information so that if they were raided again and you didn't have your card and the police said, who's this person? They say, I'm so. And so they would be in their files of the membership club. So they could say, no, no, look, he's really. Or she is really a member because we have our database.

[41:07] Meg: Okay. Okay. Cause they're allowed to be there if it's a private club.

[41:11] Jessica: Exactly. And so they issued these really cute hot pink cards. Some of the other clubs that were raided in the neighborhood were King TUTs, Wawa Hut, ABC, no Rio, 8B. C, Pyramid, and Limbo Lounge.

[41:25] Meg: Oh, New York magazine.

[41:27] Jessica: I know. They were so. They were such dunces. In 1987, Gary Ray's landlord, who had this ne' er do well son, comes to Gary Ray and says, look, I can't give you a new lease. I'm going to give you a month to month because I really want to sell the building. And Gary Ray is like, I can't run a club not knowing if I'm going to be open the next month.

[41:54] Meg: I'm going to book the ax.

[41:55] Jessica: Exactly. So that was the end of Derinka because the landlord wanted to sell the building, but the building didn't sell until 2010. So Dorinka could have absolutely lived on much longer.

[42:11] Meg: Frustrating.

[42:12] Jessica: But a fun postscript is that before it closed, There were two performers who were frequently doing their various acts at Dorinka, and they went to Gary Ray and they said, we have this big idea. We want to do. I don't know if they use the word immersive, but we want to do an immersive, like, play where we get the audience to be in the play, and we want it to be us getting married. And that was the beginning of Tony and Tina's wedding.

[42:43] Meg: No way.

[42:44] Jessica: Indeed.

[42:45] Meg: Very fun. I love that. That connected so many fun dots. And. Oh, Tom Murin. There you go, sweetheart. Lovely, lovely man.

[42:54] Jessica: How marvelous that you had that connection.

[42:57] Meg: Yeah. No, he was a huge supporter of the theater that was going on in the 90s. Our obvious tie in is real estate. Clearly, it always comes back to real estate, but there is something about the challenge of it. It is a roller coaster of emotions.

[43:22] Jessica: Well, it's like a death match. Like, getting a place to live is like fucking, you know, the Hunger Games, Survivor.

[43:31] Meg: Everyone does it. That's the thing when people are freaking out, like, oh, what am I gonna do? It's like, it's actually gonna happen. You will find a place.

[43:40] Jessica: You might have to be a mole person. You might be under the subway, but you will find a place. You'll find a little cubby hole, you know, for God's sakes. But yes.

[43:51] Meg: And how we adjust. Our first story. She adjusted to her environment, and you adjust to the scramble to find a place to live in New York. Don't you feel like it kind of makes you into a different person?

[44:03] Jessica: I'm a survivor. I mean. Right. It certainly toughens you up all as. As do most things.

[44:10] Meg: And you're. You end up being willing to take a bath in your sink if you have to.

[44:15] Jessica: That's okay. That's okay. Yes. For the young

[44:22] Meg: period of time.

[44:23] Jessica: Yes. It's exciting when you're younger to be like, my bathtub is also where I cut my vegetables because I put a big door on top of it, and now it's a cutting board. And then it's also if I have a party where I put all the beer. Yes.

[44:39] Meg: That's a very cool party.

[44:40] Jessica: That is a. That's a.

[44:42] Meg: A good.

[44:43] Jessica: A good party. There was something else I was going to say to you. I had an experience years and years ago because as. As we have talked about on this podcast, I collect vintage clothing. There was a woman who lived on the top of Carnegie hall in a duplex that she had somehow. Like, it wasn't fully squatting, but she had took liberties and, like, I think it was sort of the same thing. Like, she had taken a second level and, like. And the roof. Because no one was saying no. Yeah, but she was. It was the most unbelievable apartment I've ever seen in my life. And it. When you said the 20s atelier kind of thing, she had those slanted, you know, roof, window, whatever that is. The entire place was just racks and racks of vintage clothing along with her stuff. So that was like walking into another universe. So she was Elise's neighbor.

[45:49] Meg: Yeah. I wonder if they waved to each other from rooftops.

[45:51] Jessica: From rooftops. Like, no. They were like, don't tell anyone I'm here.