Meg: Welcome to Desperately Seeking the 80s. I am Meg—
Jessica: —and I am Jessica. Meg and I have been friends since 1982. We got through middle school and high school together here in New York City.
Meg: Where we still live, and where we podcast about New York City in the 80s. I do Ripped from the Headlines and—
Jessica: I do pop culture.
Meg: You have now looked at the 80s porn. As promised, we've got a follow-up. This is part two. What was your impression? What was your takeaway from the 80s porn?
And to give some context—Cibella Borges was on the New York police force in the 80s, and she was fired because some porn came out that she had posed for. She ended up suing the police department.
At the end of the episode, I’ll share the callback—what number the episode is—but we told this story on the podcast.
She reached out, which was very lovely of her. We had a wonderful back and forth. And then this other listener reached out and said, “I’ve seen it. Do you want to see it?”
And now—we have actually seen the porn.
Jessica: Yes. We have.
Meg: What do you think? Jessica, I know you had an impression. You're now speechless—what?
Jessica: The reason I’m hesitant is because there’s the feminist in me, and then there’s the 1980s police force brain.
Because we’ve done so much about the police force in the 80s in New York that I can understand how alarming—just, just go with me—not that she should have been fired, I’m not saying that.
But I was expecting something that was much more softcore.
Meg: This is not softcore.
This was very hardcore—but no penetration. I just—
Jessica: I want you to know that I just laughed and something flew out of my nose.
No, there’s no penetration. It is lesbian.
And the thing about porn, frequently—as anyone who’s ever seen porn knows—there’s a lot of posing and not actually doing the act.
So like, my mouth is next to your fill-in-the-blank, but it’s not actually in your fill-in-the-blank.
So there was not any actual explicit engagement between the two women, but there were a couple of poses that were like—
I was—
It’s very in your face. It’s all out there. It’s spread out.
Every orifice you could possibly want to be interested in.
Meg: Imagination is not required.
Jessica: Zero.
Me—Miss Sex Positive, you know, feminist person—
Meg: A gynecological exam.
Jessica: Yes. It is.
I was just—I had a moment of being taken aback.
And then I thought, what would Sergeant O’Reilly at the 53rd think when he sees this?
Because part of that episode was about people in the precinct seeing it and their reactions.
And I—I can just imagine that it was very difficult to—
Oh, I’m not saying that they’re right. I’m just saying that
I felt shocked. I felt shocked.
And without any shaming, my feeling was of shock. I gotta say.
And by the way—the 80s—
Meg: A story in context.
Jessica: It does.
And the 80s styling, I might add, was—
What actually struck me was that some of the—and I put this in quotes—“outfits” they had on were not far from what Prince had Apollonia in. And Sheena Easton.
Like, it was all in that vibe. Very—
But it was—
I’m not gonna lie, Meg.
I opened it up and went, “Oh, that’s not so—oh.”
Meg: Well, again—thank you, mystery person, for expanding our—
Our story. Like, everything.
Jessica: Broadening, widening our horizons.
Opening new vistas.
Can I go on?
Meg: Okay, I have one more update—again from last week.
Remember how I couldn’t remember the person who had written in?
I was like, “Where did I get it? Was it a DM? Was it an email?”
And I couldn’t remember.
Guess who it was—who was making the connection between the Suffolk County Police, Marty Tankleff, and the Long Island Serial Killer?
Jessica: Who?
Meg: Mary from upstate New York.
We used to call her “The Drive Marie.”
Jessica: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Meg: But her name is actually Mary, and she does the long drives.
And she wrote in today going like, “That was me. That was me.”
Jessica: Thank you, Mary. You are amazing.
Meg: And thank you for staying on top of it so that we could—
Jessica: Staying on top of it so we—
Meg: Could properly cite you.

Jessica: Well, there was another thing I’ll add about the porn. I just thought of something else. I was interested because the array of grooming options was not what I expected. Some of it felt contemporary, others not so much. So if I’m going to give more than just, “I’m shocked,” there were some era-specific choices that were surprising.
Meg: So that Cibella Borges story is a callback to episode 23, Police Porn and Gangs of New York, which I think was the first episode when we started talking about the 84th Street Gang.
Jessica: It is. It is. Ooh, that’s 121 episodes ago. Wow. That’s incredible.
Meg: And the beginning of an era. That was our first sort of Yorkville-centric episode that just opened up so many more stories about Yorkville.
Jessica: Ah, the Rubenstein brothers and their reign of terror. Yeah.
Meg: Are you ready to start my story?
Jessica: Yes, I am ready to start your story for you.
Meg: My engagement—I love coffee—my engagement question for you, Jessica. We talk a lot—because it’s the 80s, and also because of humankind—we talk a lot about people in positions of power who disappoint us. Who don’t support us when they should.
Jessica: Indeed.
Meg: I’m wondering if you had an example, or can think of something from when you were growing up, where you were actually like, “Wow. You did the right thing, sir, ma’am, person with authority. You actually stood up and did the right thing.”
Jessica: Are you asking about someone in general, like in the public? Or someone in my life?
Meg: In your life, or—I don’t know, whatever comes to you first.
Jessica: I’m hard-pressed.
Meg: Oh, isn’t that awful?
Jessica: Wait—I actually can think of two people who were teachers.
Meg: Okay.
Jessica: We’ve talked about Ms. Bauer, who was like—love, right? She was like, “Yeah, they’re gonna peak in high school. Don’t worry about it.” And I had another teacher, Mrs. Taylor, in fourth grade, who absolutely got me. She ran interference in ways that—at the time—I could feel it, but I didn’t understand it. And as I got older, I was like, “Oh, you were my ally. And I love you.”
Meg: Oh, people need those people.
Jessica: Yeah. And I think—yeah. Isn’t that interesting, though, that it’s teachers? A really good and compassionate teacher can make all the difference for a kid.
Meg: My sources are The Village Voice, The New York Times, and They Will Kill, which is—
Jessica: This sounds like it’s your favorite thing in the world. This must be where you—like, late at night—you’re like, “Ah. More. Who’s killing?”
Meg: It’s a very good podcast.
On June 17, 1980, Jack Lewis, a court-appointed attorney, visited his client, Adam Berwid, in the Nassau County Jail. Jack explained to Adam that he intended to use the insanity defense in Adam’s upcoming trial for the murder of his ex-wife, Ewa. This was a very reasonable approach, considering Adam’s long history with mental illness and the particulars of Ewa’s murder. But Adam didn’t see it that way. He lunged across the table, stabbing his lawyer in the neck with a ballpoint pen and declaring him the devil. The three-inch wound was only an eighth of an inch from Jack’s jugular vein. But Jack managed to survive the attack, calling out to Adam while his stretcher was being wheeled to the ambulance: “Don’t talk to anyone without a lawyer.”
Jessica: Oh my God.
Meg: I mean—good egg.
Jessica: That’s—that’s above and beyond.
Meg: While Adam may have been delusional, he knew how to work the system. And the timing was perfect for him to cause maximum damage.
But let’s back up. Adam met Ewa in Poland in the early 60s. This is another story about people who came out of World War II with a lot of friggin’ damage—and that there was generational damage because of that. I feel like it keeps coming up because of the time period we’re talking about.
Yes, they married and moved to New York and both got good engineering jobs. And that’s when things started to sour. Adam didn’t like that Ewa made more money than he did. He wanted Ewa to be a full-time housewife—but he also wanted to quit his job. First sign that he was insane.
Well—it’s like, dude cannot be pleased.
Adam refused to learn English and wanted to move back to Poland. Ewa, on the other hand, assimilated well, mastered English, and kept getting promotions—all while wearing red high heels. She loved New York. Loved America.
Adam demanded Ewa handle all the care for their two children—but also insisted she not touch them. He kept talking about the devil being present, and increasingly Ewa began to believe he was referring to her.
When Ewa nuzzled her baby’s stomach after changing his diaper, Adam accused her of sodomy and threw her out of their home by her hair.
Ewa filed a protective order against Adam. He ignored it. Then she filed for divorce.
While in county jail, Adam started writing letters on yellow legal pads. In these letters, he promised to murder Ewa. He told her he would strangle her and push her ribs right through her back.
He also wrote an open letter to the people of Nassau County, which he sent to Newsday newspaper, in which he promised, quote: “That killing their biological mother is the only effective means to protect my kids against her harmful practices toward them.”
All out in the open.
He was so delusional and explicit in his threats that Judge Joseph DeMaro set bail at $1 million and ordered a psychiatric examination.
That examination determined Adam had a, quote, “personality disorder,” and he was given a 90-day observation at Mid-Hudson Psychiatric Center.
If Adam’s explicit threats—coupled with his diagnosis—had occurred a decade earlier, Ewa might still be alive. In that case, he would have been locked up at Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where he would have been incarcerated indefinitely and subjected to abuse, shock treatments, and possibly a lobotomy.
These are not good things.
In the early 70s, the New York Court of Appeals decided that psychiatric patients were entitled to equal rights, and the law now required hospitals to actively work toward their release into society.
This all sounds great on paper, right? And in many cases, I’m sure it was absolutely the right thing to do.
Not in the case of Adam. Adam slipped through this particular crack.

Jessica: Or did he slip? I don’t think he slipped. There was nothing to slip through. It was simply—the law was in his favor. That’s it. There was no reason. If after 90 days they were like, “Oh, he’s a fucking nutter,” and that’s it—were they supposed to keep him?
Meg: Well, I’ll keep talking, and then you tell me, okay? Whether it is a crack or not a crack.
Jessica: Okay.
Meg: One young law intern in the Nassau County DA’s office knew Adam would be released from Mid-Hudson very soon because of the new law. Adam was savvy, and this intern knew he’d be able to meet the requirements toward release. Right? Because he doesn’t think he’s, like, a werewolf or anything. But that didn’t mean that he wasn’t—
Jessica: That should have been the standard. If he says he’s a werewolf—
Meg: —you have to keep him in. Werewolves—no. But like I said, that doesn’t mean he wasn’t horribly dangerous. The law intern, the DA, the judge, Ewa’s lawyer, and the court psychiatrist all wrote impassioned letters to Mid-Hudson sounding the alarm. Adam was intent on killing Ewa and would probably kill his children too, rather than allow her to have custody. In response, Mid-Hudson recommitted Adam involuntarily for another six months. All right—read the letters. Convinced.
Jessica: Good.
Meg: Adam complained that it was unfair to keep him there because it prevented him from killing Ewa.
Jessica: Are you joking?
Meg: No, I am not.
Jessica: Oh my God. I shouldn’t—I mean, I’m sorry that I’m laughing. It’s just so... it’s literally unhinged.
Meg: After nine months, Mid-Hudson—which was a max security facility—was forced to transfer Adam to a more, quote, “hospital-like” treatment center, because the treatment that Mid-Hudson offered just could not help him. So the only two options you have here are: max security, which is basically like a prison but you don’t get much treatment; or “hospital-like,” where you’re locking the doors, but it’s significantly laxer in terms of security. Only two options.
So Adam was transferred to Pilgrim Psychiatric Center, which was close to his home in Mineola, as required by law. Because that’s also what the new law said: that if they are to be in a hospital involuntarily, it has to be close to their friends and family—so their friends and family can visit.
Well—guess who his family is.
Jessica: The recipients of murder threats.
Meg: Yeah. Oops. That’s a crack.
Jessica: Yeah. That’s a crack. That’s a crack.
Meg: Well—but still, he has not orchestrated it. This is now the law.
Jessica: Yeah, okay.
Meg: I’m just—I’m just making—I'm seeing him working the system. The faulty... the faulty options. Continue.
Jessica: We have spotted a crack. Keep your eye on that crack.
Meg: All right, fine.
Jessica: Eye on the—my eye is back to our previous conversation. My eye is on the crack, please.
Meg: Pilgrim was getting an influx of criminally insane patients under the new laws and was not happy about it, but really had no choice in the matter. But they were just like, “We’re not equipped for this.” But there was nothing to be done. The law was the law.
Ewa was nervous at first, but she was also just so tired of being scared. She had a great life in every other way. She was excelling in her career. She had friends. She had her two beautiful children. She was starting to date again.
She went to visit Adam at Pilgrim, and he was calm. He wanted to get back together—clearly to kill her.
She said gently that she’d moved on, but she wished him well. But she actually left thinking, “Maybe he’s getting better.”
On April 5, 1979, Adam escaped from Pilgrim by simply walking off the grounds.
Two days later, Ewa came home to find Adam asleep in her bed, in his underwear.
She called police from her neighbor’s house, but the police weren’t really sure what to do—because it was actually his home.
So he’s allowed to be in his home. We can’t take him out of his home.
Jessica: Crack.
Meg: Thank you.
Jessica: Because if he was supposed to be in the hospital, it wasn’t for an appendicitis operation—whatever. This was locked up, right?
Meg: Well, Pilgrim hadn’t alerted anyone that he’d escaped. So without that alert being put put in the world – 

Jessica: The police couldn’t call?
Meg: It took a while to figure it out.
In the meantime, he’s in her room in his underwear, and she’s at the neighbor’s with her kids.
The mess was ironed out, and Adam was sent back to Pilgrim—only to escape again a few days later.
Jessica: Okay. Pilgrim stinks.
Meg: Well—they’re like, “We’re not set up to lock people up like prisoners. That’s not how we work.” At the time, that was the problem. This law had happened, and this place that was used to dealing with people who had dementia suddenly had criminally insane people.
Jessica: Mm. I would have locked them down.
Meg: You gotta call a contractor for that. Like, it takes some time. It takes some doing. Right?
Jessica: I’m having a very much more medieval solution rattling around in my head.

Meg: Well, that’s why the law existed in the first place—because of all the medieval solutions that had been going on up until the 70s.
Jessica: All right, well, I’m—I’m pro. I’m pro Hieronymus Bosch.
Meg: So this time he climbed out a second-floor bathroom and lowered himself to the ground using bed sheets tied together.
Jessica: Ah, a classic.
Meg: He tried to pick his daughter up from school. But—remember you were talking about teachers?—the school principal called the police.
Jessica: Oh my God. No.
Meg: “I do not give little girl to crazy man. That does not happen.”
Jessica: Excellent gay principal.
Meg: I mean, so far we’ve got a lot of people who are doing the right thing. Usually we tell stories and, like, there’s someone who is just so not doing their job—or doesn’t give a shit—or just, like, you know... bureaucracy.
Jessica: Yes.
Meg: Or misogyny or whatever. This is not—that’s not the story here.
Jessica: Okay.
Meg: After this, Adam was returned to Mid-Hudson. Two escapes—come on.
Jessica: Good.
Meg: For the next seven months, he devoted himself to a regular fitness routine, and he claimed his delusions had ceased. And he never, ever, ever mentioned Ewa and the kids. So Mid-Hudson sent Adam back to Pilgrim, and this time he was under the care of 70-year-old psychiatrist Dr. Irving Blumenthal.
Dr. Irving Blumenthal had access to Adam’s entire medical history—including the urgent letters written by previous psychiatrists, the lawyers, the DA’s office, and the judge. But Dr. Blumenthal’s first priority was Adam. So when Ewa’s lawyer asked to be notified if Adam left the grounds, Dr. Blumenthal said he would not do that. That would violate his patient’s confidentiality.
But on the front of Adam’s file, in big red letters, he printed: Police must be notified if patient escapes.
Again, all about this word: escape. I mean, what constitutes an escape? That will come up in a moment.
Now, Adam was on his best behavior. Adam didn’t think he was a werewolf—but he did very much know how to suss out Dr. Blumenthal and give him exactly what he needed. And after two weeks, Dr. Blumenthal called Adam an “absolute angel” and gave him an honor card that allowed him a day pass.
Jessica: Are you shitting me right now?
Meg: The nurses were immediately alarmed that Dr. Blumenthal was acting cavalierly. But Blumenthal insisted excursions were good for Adam’s treatment.
Jessica: So aren’t we back to this being a story about someone who’s doing their job poorly?
Meg: Hmm. Perhaps.
Jessica: Yes.
Meg: On December 5th, Adam left the grounds in the morning, but failed to return by his 4 p.m. curfew. Shocker. His nurse alerted Blumenthal, but Blumenthal blew her off.
Jessica: The rage is now boiling within me—with Dr. Blumenthal.
Meg: When Adam returned at 5:30 p.m. with no explanation, Blumenthal felt vindicated. “See? He’s back. You were overreacting.”
Jessica: But he happens to be splattered in blood.
Meg: No, no. He wasn’t. He just came back a little bit late. He just came back a little bit late. What’s the problem, nurse?
Jessica: Could he be conditioning Dr. Blumenthal, you think? Maybe.
Meg: And Blumenthal issued Adam a day pass for the following day—which happened to be the second anniversary of his divorce.
Jessica: Oh my God. What was Blumenthal’s first name again?
Meg: Irving.
Jessica: Turf.
Meg: Okay. The nurses went above Blumenthal’s head. They knew he was a friggin’ idiot. But Blumenthal was able to placate his superior.
The next day, Adam took the Long Island Railroad one stop to Mineola. He went to Friendly’s for lunch, went to the dentist to get his teeth cleaned, then went to Herman’s World of Sporting Goods to buy a hunting knife.
That evening, Ewa called 911 when she heard glass break in her basement. But she didn’t have time to give her address before Adam attacked her—and then he replaced the phone in its cradle. Chilling.
So there was a 911 call, but they didn’t know where it was coming from.
After stabbing her to death, he boarded up the broken window, cleaned the kitchen of blood, and laid her body out on the couch. Then he held a wake and forced his two small children to kiss her goodbye.
When Adam was a no-show at Pilgrim, the ward nurse alerted police. But when the police went to Ewa’s house, it was dark and quiet. And they’re like, “Well, there’s no probable cause,” so they left.
Jessica: No probable cause?
Meg: Yeah. I can’t. I know.
The next morning, Adam called to turn himself in. When the police arrived, they spotted the two children waving frantically at them from the upstairs window.
Adam was arrested—around the time that a telegram arrived notifying Ewa of his escape.
Jessica: You’re joking.
Meg: They’d sent a telegram. It arrived the next morning—a little late.
Jessica: A telegram? Not a phone call?
Meg: Well—I don’t know if they tried to call. And by that time, she was dead. Because he’d already killed her. I mean—he killed her before his curfew.
Jessica: Okay.
Meg: Once incarcerated, Adam claimed, quote: “I did my act of taking a human life not in the name of hatred toward my former wife, but in the name of Jesus Christ to defend my loved ones.”
Adam also made a death list of those who suggested he was insane—including his lawyer, Jack Lewis. And he ended up representing himself during his trial. Jack Lewis didn’t return to be his lawyer after the stabbing.
Jessica: I’m shocked.
Meg: And was sentenced to 25 years to life.
Jessica: That guy.
Meg: Oh, Adam.
Jessica: Yes.
Meg: And Blumenthal.
Jessica: And Blumenthal. All of the... no probable cause cops. They know he’s on the lam. Like, what is wrong with these people?
Meg: I was struck, though, by how many people really went above and beyond—because they were aware of these cracks, or whatever you want to call them. They were aware, like—“Look, the law is not supporting this particular situation.”

Jessica: Let’s have a quick moment, shall we? Who were these people?
Meg: For the most part, lawyers and doctors and the DA. There are a lot. And the judge.
Jessica: Okay, okay.
Meg: There are people who—
Jessica: I’m not doubting you. I was thinking—because I was so fixated on the nurses—and I’m like—
Meg: Oh, and the nurses. The women knew.
Jessica: But clearly everybody knew.
Meg: Everybody knew. It just took one bad apple, to be honest. That was what was so frustrating in this story. Absolutely everybody knew. It just took one asshole, and it was his—
Jessica: That asshole’s ego.
Meg: Yes. Yeah. As with all things.
I hope this makes you feel a little bit better: some of those cracks have been sealed.
Now a team of doctors and nurses determine treatment and decisions like day passes. So it’s never going to be up to one person.
Jessica: That’s a plus. They learned their lesson. Yes.
Meg: And that Adam’s letters now would be considered terrorist threats.
Jessica: Ooh, that is good.
Meg: Treated much more seriously than it was then.
Those kids—they actually turned out okay. Olga, the little girl—she’s now like our age, and she’s a professor of child psychology.
Jessica: Oh, wow.
Meg: You know?
Jessica: Yes. Not a shock—but yeah.
Meg: And they were awarded $600,000, which the New York Mental Health Board paid out for losing both their parents in this horrible way.
Jessica: And her brother?
Meg: I don’t know about her brother. I hope—
I hope he was. I couldn’t find anything on the brother.
Unfortunately, the brother shares the name of the father.
Jessica: Oh, wow.
Meg: So I think maybe the brother might have changed his name.
Jessica: That makes a lot of sense, right? Yes, yes. Very sad.
Meg: Also, like I was saying—another example of how—I mean, not everything’s about World War II, but I do think—
Jessica: That a lot is.
Meg: A lot is.
This was a pretty messed up situation.
And I just—I have to think that this erratic behavior had some kind of connection.
And also, to be displaced from your homeland—how are you going to respond to that?
Ewa—she’s good to go. Loves the new opportunities. She’s being respected.
She’s clearly extraordinarily bright, and America is working for her.
Now her husband—not so much.
Jessica: Although it sounds—I mean, again, I am not a board-certified psychiatrist—silly true fact—but it sounds like he was... wait, there’s a technical term. Cuckoo Kachoo. All on his own.
And that this—his circumstances could very well have triggered his—his psychopathy.
Whatever flavor of psychopathy he has.
Meg: I followed a Reddit thread and there was someone who said that they were an intern at Pilgrim when all of this stuff was going down, and that they knew the nurses—some of the nurses involved—and that the nurses at Pilgrim were like, “Yeah, he’s not even insane. He’s just a mean fucking asshole who’s going to murder his wife.”
Because sometimes that’s what men do.
That’s what the intern said the nurses were saying about him.
Jessica: Really?
Meg: Yeah. And we have to take that with a grain of salt, but—interesting little anecdotal Reddit info.
Jessica: It’s a fabulous tidbit.
So, Meg, when you were at Brown, was there like a rec center of some kind? Where there were, like, pool—
Meg: —tables? Or like the Blue Room was where people hung out?
Jessica: And did you have a recreational activity that you liked? Was there a video game? Or was there—oh, there was pool. Oh, what was—
Meg: No, you know what was better?
Jessica: What?
Meg: In the basement of the Grad Center is an actual bar.
Jessica: Okay.
Meg: And it does have, like, recreational stuff. And you couldn’t really—you couldn’t go there, presumably, unless you were 21 years old. Unless you’re a grad student.
But, you know, if there was a friendly person at the door, you could go in.
And it’s kind of fun, because now when I go visit Alice there, she and her friends are hanging out at the Grad Center.
I’m like, “Oh my God. That’s—”
It might be called the Grad Center Bar, now that I think about it. Very well may be.
Anyway. Yeah.
Jessica: So was there like a—did you play, like, pool? Or was there a thing that—like a—
Meg: Like drinking games, I guess.
Jessica: Okay, well, at Kenyon, because we were in the middle of nowhere—beer pong, as you know—
Meg: Yes.
Jessica: They made a few feeble efforts to give us something to do.
And in Gund Hall, which was where the dining hall was—as well as a study center, as well as a café—all in a really kind of gross brutalist building—
Meg: What’s up with brutalist architecture?
Jessica: I don’t know. I hate it.
Meg: Grad Center—brutalist.
Jessica: Okay. There you go.
There was an area where they had pool tables, some video games, and a pinball machine.
Meg: Ooh.
Jessica: And it was called Earthshaker. And if you got to a certain score, the whole thing would shake.
Meg: Very exciting.
Jessica: It was very exciting. Yes. And being able to beat Earthshaker was, like, a thing.
Meg: And was it an old school one with a ball?
Jessica: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Meg: Okay.
Jessica: I mean, this was 1980s. Yes.
Meg: Well, they started getting a little exciting. They started making things, like, more automatic—the pinball machines.
Jessica: But this was—this was a classic. Flippers, balls—
Meg: Awesome.
Jessica: You know, the whole plunger—the whole shebang.
So, I have a great affection for pinball. And I know you do, too.
Meg: I really do.
Jessica: Well, you might like this story.
On May 22, 1985, in The New York Times, there’s an article about the demise of one of the most beloved pinball arcades in New York City.
And it’s part of one of the things we’ve talked about many times on this podcast—which is the Disneyfication of Times Square.
The Broadway Arcade, owned and run by Stephen Epstein, was on Broadway and 52nd Street. So even above Times Square.
Meg: Yeah, okay.
Jessica: And it was a New York institution that had been serving the needs of the pinball and gaming community of New York City for 50 years.
So this is since roughly 1935.
Amazing players who fancied themselves the best in the world would go there.
But it’s a subset of the people who thought they were the best in the world that were really interesting—because what’s on Broadway?
Meg: Theater.
Jessica: So the theater community frequented Broadway Arcade. And between shows, between rehearsals—even between acts—they would run out of the theater and play pinball.
At Mr. Epstein’s arcade, you had people like Roberta Flack, Matthew Broderick, Paul Simon, Lou Reed.
By the way, when I was doing this, I was reminded of my favorite headline ever from The Onion. Remember The Onion?

Meg: Of course.
Jessica: Okay. And it was—remember how Lou Reed—
Meg: They're still online.
Jessica: Lou Reed had a liver transplant? Yeah. The headline was: Liver rejects Lou Reed. Known for being a bit of a dick, as we know.
And John Hammond would go there—who is a legendary musicologist—and he was a major pinball maven. He would go there and he was the historian of the place and would talk about how in the 30s, it was—
Meg: Was skeeball that people were playing, I was imagining.
Jessica: And he would talk to anyone who wanted to know about the history of the demise of pinball at the hands of Mayor LaGuardia. Why? I’m gonna tell you.
Meg: Okay, good. What a stick in the mud.
Jessica: Well, it was really, really fascinating. In 1942, Mayor LaGuardia banned pinball. Why, you say?
Meg: Yes.
Jessica: Why? Because in the 20s and 30s, pinball was a slightly different game. And what you won was money—because it was a gambling enterprise. It had morphed into gambling.
Interestingly, so many of the machines that were made were made in Chicago, which was seen as the true city of vice. And there was always a bit of a rivalry between New York and Chicago. And Mayor LaGuardia was like, “We don’t want that sin here. We don’t want that nonsense.”
So LaGuardia had a huge press conference—and he beat a pinball machine to death with a sledgehammer and then threw a whole bunch of pinball machines into the river.
Meg: I don’t know if it was—I bet it was the Hudson, closer to Broadway.
Jessica: And so—age well? No. No, it doesn’t.
He was like, “This is terrible.” But don’t forget—in our day—video games. People were like, “It’s from Satan! Children’s eyes are becoming pinwheels! They don’t know what to do with themselves anymore.”
In fact—this is a little off from video games—but do you remember there was an After School Special about Dungeons & Dragons?
Meg: Of course.
Jessica: With Tom Hanks—who loses. He loses his mind. He loses perspective. He thinks he’s living in the game and he’s gonna kill himself and other people until his friends are like, “Hey man, you’re not in the game.”
And he’s like, “Oh my God, guys. Thanks. I was gonna do bad things.”
Like literally, I think that’s the line. “Like, bad things.”
It was the worst. Rivals Helen Hunt’s jump out of the window.
Meg: That was PCP, right?
Jessica: That was PCP. That was a little angel dust vs. D&D, which is hardly the same.
So there’s always parents being like, “The kids! But what about the children? Oh no!”
So Mayor LaGuardia went bananas with this. It’s a den of vice. It’s gambling! Sin!
Meg: I know. Not good.
Jessica: Also interesting—he was a little tiny man.
Meg: So maybe he needed a big sledgehammer.
Jessica: He needed a big sledgehammer. Exactly.
Anyway—what was really interesting was that at the same time, what happened? Pearl Harbor.
So all of the materials that needed to be used for bombardiers and all kinds of—
Meg: The war machines. War things.
Jessica: War things.
They needed the same materials that pinball machines were made out of.
So for a while, things lay fallow in the pinball world.
But Mayor LaGuardia did indeed succeed in getting them officially banned in New York until 1976.
Meg: Just in time for us to grow up.
Jessica: Indeed.
Also interestingly, in 1975, The Who’s Tommy—the film—comes out with The Pinball Wizard, bringing pinball back into people’s consciousness.
Meg: Ooh, okay.
Jessica: And now it’s like a viable business because everyone wants to play.
Meg: Interestingly, it never stopped being a viable business.
There were always pinball machines around—but it was not allowed.
And one of the ways that owners of arcades got around it was—you couldn’t gamble.
There was—whatever the mechanism was that allowed people to do what they were doing—they made it so the only thing you could win was another game. Right?
Meg: Exactly.
Jessica: And that was part of what helped them get around the gambling thing, which is why Stephen Epstein’s family had this pinball arcade since the 30s—why it was able to be around.
Nonetheless, there’s a problem for Stephen Epstein in 1985. As always in New York—who’s causing a problem for a small business?
Meg: The Mafia.
Jessica: Close. Landlords.
Meg: Oh, yeah. It’s hard. Small business is hard.
Jessica: It is.
And when it looked like he was going to lose his lease, his patrons really stepped up.
And they were doing all kinds of fundraisers and doing things that were super wholesome to boost the profile of Broadway Arcade.
“It’s a clean, wholesome place,” said David McGee, who plays with his six-year-old son Travis in the arcade’s father-son pinball league—
Which also goes by the names parent-child league and adult-child league.
Meg: I know. Let’s not do that. But I like parent-child.
Jessica: David McGee and his son Travis finished second in the competition and received a pair of Yankees tickets.
“People go to the Broadway Arcade to play pinball,” he said.
“Those who come for other purposes are quickly run off.”
Meg: Okay.
Jessica: Meaning that the landlord and those trying to clean up Times Square felt that—even though Broadway Arcade was 10 blocks north of Times Square—that there would be runoff, and that it was still likely to be a pretty rum place.
It was not.
Meg: I mean, there’s so much else going on in Times Square.
Jessica: Like, really?
Meg: You’re gonna pick on the pinballs?
Jessica: Yes.
The local community board approved the lease, saying that a plan for redeveloping Times Square had lumped pinball arcades with pornographic movie theaters and sex-related shops—which planners said would all disappear from the area when the cleanup project was completed.
Mr. Epstein disagreed.
“It’s wholesome fun. It’s a stress reliever.”
And he even designed a video game as a psychoanalytic tool.
He did a year of graduate work in psychology to that end.
So Mr. Epstein—he was a true aficionado. He field-tested machines for manufacturers and tried to find the holes in the machines. He was indispensable.
He loved it.
He brought in the highest caliber players.
One of them was Roger Sharpe—who was a habitué of the place—who also argued that it should stay around.
He wrote the book Pinball and designed machines as well.
Now—keep that name in your mind. Roger Sharpe.
Meg: Got it.
Jessica: Now—I didn’t know when “Disneyfication” became a term. But I think the first time it shows up is in this article that I found from—
Meg: The New York Times from 1985. That’s wild.
Jessica: Some players spoke of the fine points of the game—such as the part that humidity plays in the role of the ball.
Others spoke of larger issues—such as rising rents in the city killing off small businesses, and of what adds up to a kind of Disneyfication of the city.
“I’m sure it’s a moral crusade to clean up the city,” said a lawyer playing Firepower II, “and a lot of good things—”
Meg: I thought—I assumed that it was because of The Lion King, which we don’t see till the 2000s or the 90s.
Jessica: Well—it’s a great coming together of all kinds of things.
Meg: But there was—what was coincidence?

Jessica: Yes. So there are a couple of other things that I thought were terrific that were related to this article. One of the people mentioned is Lou Reed. Lou Reed—I did a little bit of a dive—was such a pinball crazy person. He was what pinball aficionados call a pinhead. He got married to his first wife at Broadway Arcade.
And here’s a little something from one of his roadies:
“Lou and I bonded on tour late night playing pinball in hotel children's game rooms to the point that I carried $50 in quarters wherever we went. I was mandated to book hotels that had pinball machines. He was a master of the slanted table, and each player’s turn could take 10 to 15 minutes while the others remained a spectator—and we chatted about life.”
Well—in 1984, I find on YouTube that Lou Reed premieres a new song live at a gig called Down at the Arcade on September 25, 1984, at the Capitol Theater. You can find it online. It’s very sweet. He just loved his pinball.
The last little bit that I will share with you is—remember the name I told you to recall?
Meg: Roger Sharpe.
Jessica: Sharp. Okay. So the question remains: how did the ban from LaGuardia get lifted?
Meg: Yes.
Jessica: Well—in 1976, pinball game manufacturers started to lobby to get their game legalized in New York. They wanted to sell more pinball machines.
So what do they do? They bring in—literally—a sharpshooter. In 1976, the lobbyists for the pinball manufacturers bring Roger Sharpe into a City Council meeting.
And I’m just going to read it because I can’t do it better:
“The ban was lifted when Roger Sharpe went in and he did a Babe Ruth number where he called his shot. Then he launched his ball. This was after several attempts to prove to them that he could actually beat the machine—but they weren’t buying it until he made that shot. As soon as he made it, they took a vote and the ban was lifted. It was a big deal.”
With a single successfully landed flipper shot, Sharpe proved to the City Council—and the nation at large—that pinball was, in fact, a game of skill and not just a tool of iniquity for hoodlums and rock and rollers.
Meg: I love that. You might be happy to know—you know my friend Josh, who came to our launch party for the YouTube channel?
Jessica: Yes.
Meg: He had his birthday at an arcade near Broadway—like, near Times Square.
Jessica: No!
Meg: No, no—this was just this year.
Jessica: I love that.
Meg: And it’s, like, so friggin’ active. Like, it was so packed—we were trying to find our group.
Jessica: Amazing and fun.
Meg: It’s beyond fun.
Jessica: I think it’s wonderful. Yay, pinball.
Meg: Yay, pinball. Keep it.

Meg: Tie us up.
Jessica: Ill-considered lawmaking.
Meg: Well, that’s pithy.
Jessica: Look—
Meg: No, it’s good. I’m sorry. I’m just—I’m just being a jerk.
Jessica: Well, boo, come up with your own.
Meg: Oh, no, no, no—I just—I was just ribbing you.
Jessica: Look—
Meg: No, no—I appreciate it. What is it again? Inefficient laws?
Jessica: Ill-considered.
Meg: Ill-considered laws. Ill-considered laws.
Jessica: Ah, double check that. Don’t try to double down on liking it now, Meg. It’s too late. It’s too late. That ship sailed.
And—we have another announcement.
Meg: We have a great announcement!
We are going to have another event event with us—with amazing Malt and Mold.
Kevin, who runs Malt and Mold, is an expert on East Village bars—dive bars, specifically dive bars.
So we are going to do a pub crawl of bars that were around in the 80s in the East Village.
It’s going to be on May 3rd, starting at 3 p.m.
If you would like to join us, please email me at meg@desperately80s.com, and I will send you the location of our first stop.
And you can join us, and it’ll be really fun, and we’ll have some fun facts, and Kevin will give us a tour, and it’ll be really fun—and we’ll drink.
Jessica: Some beer. And get dressed in your finest 80s garb, should you choose. We will.