[00:16] Meg: Welcome to Desperately Seeking the 80s. I am Meg and this is Alex, who is very kindly filling in for Jessica today. And we're going to keep the same format. I'm going to tell Alex a story from the eighties in New York City and then he's gonna tell me one. And so, yeah. Alex, thank you so much for joining me today.

[00:38] Alex: Well, thank you for having me. It's. I guess it's technically my second time on the podcast. We did a field trip together. I believe that is true. At Ryan's Daughter.

[00:48] Meg: Thank you for remembering that. Cause I would not have remembered that.

[00:50] Alex: Oh, no. But I left a bit of my heart there. I mean, it's a very special place. But no, I will always leap a chance to appear on your podcast.

[01:00] Meg: That's awesome. We also, as you know, talk about you all the time.

[01:04] Alex: I do know that. It just really keeps me interested. You guys had some very flattering stuff recently, and I turned 14 shades of purple on my walk to work, so thanks for that.

[01:15] Meg: And this summer, something kind of crazy happened, right, With Flaming Pablo.

[01:20] Alex: Oh, yeah. Well, just as a bit of backstory for those who may not recognize my name, I, for the past 20 years have written a blog called stupidly called Flaming Pablum, which is all about my life in New York City and growing up here and a lot of other things, too. But that's the main thrust of it, and in fact, that's how you, I think, first found me, is I had written about a few subjects that were near and dear to Meg and Jessica's heart, and they reached out and we became friends and here we are. But I've been keeping this blog, for lack of a better term, for 20 years. Like I said, my 20th anniversary was this past July, and just about two weeks ago, I woke up to be curtly informed by my service provider type pad that they were discontinuing operation and gave me a very finite and slim arrow sized window of opportunity to migrate 20 years of content to another platform. Which is.

[02:17] Meg: That is so terrifying.

[02:18] Alex: Oh, yeah, it's. I hate to sound histrionic and say that it's my life's work, but after you've devoted 20 years to something you guys have, you know, think of all the time you guys have spent accruing hours into this project.

[02:30] Meg: Honestly. I mean, if suddenly our providers, servers or whatever went like, oh, yeah, no, all of your content is gone.

[02:38] Alex: Yeah, I mean, that's. A similar thing had happened. I used to work for. For a very narrow window of time, I worked at MTV News Online. And about a year ago, the heads of state at, I guess, Paramount pulled the plug on the entirety of MTV News. So there used to be this vast archive of stories, and that's now completely inaccessible. So it felt a bit like that. And this was during, like, a busy end of the summer. I'm sending my kids back to college and work is crazy. And suddenly I had this new quandary of if I don't act now to salvage my blog, it's all going to go away. So I managed to do it after a lot of trial and error and exploration. So now it's on a different service provider, which is wonderful.

[03:19] Meg: WordPress.

[03:20] Alex: WordPress, yeah. And prior to this, this is a dumb footnote, but a big disconnect was always that the URL of my blog had nothing to do with the title of the blog. It was a totally different word.

[03:32] Meg: We know, we did think that was maybe, I don't know, the wisest choice you made 20 years ago.

[03:39] Alex: And it was one of those things like, I never corrected it and it just. I never fixed it. And now I suddenly was forced with the opportunity to find a new home. So I was like, okay, now's the time to do it. So it's basically flamingpablum.com. easy peasy. No problem. You should be able to find it. I'm hoping that those who are used to the old version, which is up, I think until the 30th, will see I have a, you know, redirection page and they'll find it. I'm still here. So.

[04:02] Meg: Yeah, thank goodness. Oh, thanks. We've been around long enough to have not used computers. Oh, yeah. So, yeah. Technology has changed so profoundly during our time. So if you were doing something creative 20 years ago, I mean, long enough to have the technology, like, bite you in the ass by saying we're just like two old and creaky.

[04:24] Alex: Right. Well, there's also this weird misconception that things that are on the Internet live forever. And in many instances, that might be true, but there's also things go away, that sense of finality and, you know, like, well, this doesn't. You don't own this. You know, this could go away. And that, to me was really sobering.

[04:42] Meg: Right. It's not in safekeeping, like in a bank vault or something.

[04:47] Alex: Exactly. It was just really shocking. And also, like, I started Googling different stories about, like, what are other people doing? How are other people grappling with this? And so many stories in the sort of tech media were like, well, it's this anachronistic mode of communication anyway, and who. You know, who's. Who's even blogging these days? I'm like, well, I am.

[05:07] Meg: And that's completely. Blogging is such a huge thing with substack. People love the blogs.

[05:13] Alex: I know, but it's just like, for me, it's just was. It was all I. It was the first one I'd ever started on, and it's the tool I now have been using for 20 years and I know how to do it effortlessly. So now I'm having to learn how to crawl again because. Because, like, WordPress, while very simple and accessible, isn't the intuitive tool that typed seemed like. So it's. We'll get there. I'll all be fine.

[05:38] Meg: Yes, it will be fine. But, yeah, I respect that new journey you're going on. Okay, so my engagement question for you hit me for my story. I know because you have told me, if not in person. I read it on your blog. I can't remember which one. That you have been mugged. That you were mugged in the 80s. Would you like to share any of

[06:09] Alex: those experiences that may have been the post that actually brought us together? Because I had written, I had been asked by a friend of mine I went to college with, who asked like, well, were you ever mugged? And I'm like, was I ever mugged? Holy crap. It's almost like a rite of passage. You're not really a New Yorker unless you've had, you know, trouble on the street. And I, based on that question, I did this one really lengthy post where I recounted, like, six or seven incidents from my childhood where I'd been accosted or attacked is a big word, but. Or like, you know, someone came up to me and demanded my money. That sort of thing. I guess that type of stuff probably doesn't happen if you live in Pataskala, Ohio, but in New York City, when your number's up, it does make a difference where you are. The first time I was ever mugged was on Park Avenue. Well, you know, so.

[06:57] Meg: Yeah. Would you tell me that story on Park Avenue?

[06:59] Alex: Sure. Well, I was probably. I grew up on 93rd street, and I lived about four blocks away from my school. I went to a private Catholic school called St. David's and at some point during the school year, we were informed by the powers that be at St. David's that we boys had to walk ourselves to school. Like, moms were no longer allowed to drop us off. I don't know what grade I was in. It Was probably like, you know, 11 or 12. I have no idea. So it wasn't that big a deal because it was only four blocks and I certainly knew the route. So, sure enough, some weeks into that, I'm walking down Park Avenue and come to the corner. I think it's the. It's Brick church, right on 90th or 91st Street.

[07:43] Meg: 91st.

[07:44] Alex: And I'm standing on that corner, and suddenly, out of nowhere, a larger individual with an eye is looking me in the eye and says, give me all your money.

[07:52] Meg: And I was like, well, same age.

[07:55] Alex: I would say probably a few years older.

[07:57] Meg: Okay.

[07:58] Alex: And I went to a school that provided lunch, so I didn't bring any money. And as a 12 year old, if I had any money, it wasn't going to be much, but I didn't have any. And I was like, I'm really sorry. And I pull out my pockets, you know, to demonstrate, and they're like rabbit ears blowing in the wind. And I don't think he was expecting this. You know, I thought he was gonna make his payday and go.

[08:22] Meg: He looked you up and down.

[08:24] Alex: He believed me. And then a little blazer, right? And then, like, took off across Park Avenue. I don't know if that counts as being mugged, but it was certainly like I was shaken like a leaf. And ironically, from, you know, at the end of the. I. I continued on the school. I had my school day, went home, I told mom about it, and she's like, well, you better start bringing money with you to school in case this happens again. I'm like, okay. And I would, you know, keep a couple of dollars in my shoe or something. I, you know, but that was. That was the first. There were. There were others that were significant.

[08:51] Meg: That is such a great story, though, because the thing about Brick Church, that block is I think there's only one doorman on that side of the street. Very cogent point, because Brick Church takes up so much of that block, at least. And look, if you're going to mug somebody on Park Avenue, you got to pick that kind of block.

[09:08] Alex: I mean, could it have been that strategic? I don't know, but it was probably like, how many eyes are watching me? Brick Church was not bustling with activity on probably Tuesday morning.

[09:17] Meg: Even, like, enters through that door usually.

[09:20] Alex: That's true, yeah. I mean, I was very fortunate to grow up in a neighborhood, as I believe you did. And you were right there. You think you were just down towards

[09:28] Meg: 92nd between park and Lexington, which is a lovely street.

[09:31] Alex: We were very Fortunate to grow up an area that was relatively untouched from the rigors of the age, where you had, like, Son of Sam and the blackout and white flight and everything going on. But the same token, New York City was still New York City. If you're. Once again, if your number was up, you could very easily find trouble or it would find you, you know.

[09:49] Meg: Yes.

[09:49] Alex: And it did.

[09:50] Meg: And that is such a good lead in to my story.

[09:53] Alex: Awesome.

[09:54] Meg: My sources are New York Times from 1982, a bunch of different articles, and New York magazine, 1982. I focused on 1982. All right. In September 1982, at around 4:45, Janice Bowman was walking south on Park Avenue at 94th Street.

[10:17] Alex: That was perfect.

[10:19] Meg: I know. She was passing Hunter High School on the right. She was a nurse at Mount Sinai and had just gotten off work. And she lived in the East 80s. And as she passed Hunter, she saw three teenagers leaning up against the red brick building. Now, like we were just saying, unlike other blocks along Park Avenue, Park Avenue, I mean, you've got like two to three doormen per block, right? Yeah, except at Brick Church and at

[10:51] Alex: Hunter High School, which was just that sort of red brick facade for the entirety of the block, I believe.

[10:57] Meg: So it sort of set back from the sidewalk.

[11:00] Alex: There's crevices.

[11:01] Meg: There are crevices. All right. Now she felt nervous, but also she was so exhausted from getting off of her shift. Usually she would have crossed the street to the more doorman filled stretch if she'd just gone to the other side of park, but she didn't, and she just decided to walk. As she passed them, one of the teenagers approached, grabbed the gold chain with a cross around her neck and snapped it free. It was a gift, by the way, that her parents had given her when she was a little girl. Two plainclothes cops who had been eyeing the teenagers came running over.

[11:47] Alex: Wow.

[11:47] Meg: I know.

[11:48] Alex: That never happened in my experience.

[11:51] Meg: Seriously. But the boys outran them, and Janice was left on the sidewalk yelling, thief. Later that month, Margaret Weintraub was mugged on 93rd, just off Lexington. Wow. Her first reaction was rage rather than fear. Quote, you just react with your gut. You forget the things you plan to do. You suddenly feel someone has done something to you and you're going to get them. George Levine was mugged in July 1981 in the foyer of his building on Madison in 95th.

[12:26] Alex: Wow.

[12:27] Meg: Quote, these days you have to have a technique like an extra wallet. You can always give up. You hear so many stories of people being punched and killed that you give a mugger points for not hurting you. Fair enough. On September 18, Miguel Morales was in his car at a stoplight on Lexington and 104th when two men approached his car. One put a gun to his head and said, quote, I don't want to kill you. I want the money now. Miguel had $149 from the east Harlem liquor store where he worked. He was on his way delivering the money to the bank.

[13:05] Alex: Right? Right.

[13:06] Meg: And he handed the money over to the muggers, but as they ran off, he pulled out his pistol and shot them. Missing. Wow. Quote, one way I'm lucky. I don't want anyone to get hurt. The other way, I'm unlucky, because I'd like to get them right. I think it's so interesting, all the rage. Like, people are, like, angry.

[13:29] Alex: I can. I can empathize with the rage. But there's also a moment where you've got to put things in perspective, because if your quote, unquote, rage succeeds, like, had he struck one of those guys with his shot, his life would have been changed forever completely.

[13:46] Meg: I mean, that's a tragedy. And I'm sorry, but, like, kids stealing money, no one should be shot in the street. I mean, that's.

[13:53] Alex: Well, right. That's why it's a little. But, you know, there is. I remember, you know. Yeah. As someone who's been a victim of very insignificant crimes, when it does happen to you, you do feel like you want retribution, but you've got it. You've got to compartmentalize that and let your higher intellect take a man. Because it's like, well, look, think about the ramifications of exacting revenge. Obviously, I'm thinking of, like, Bernard Goetz and stuff like that. Oh, absolutely. I mean, that's not a solution. You know, it's. Well, I forget what year that was. Was that we're talking about. It can only be a year or two later.

[14:33] Meg: It's later. It's not. I don't think it's earlier. I think it's later.

[14:37] Alex: Yeah, that was a huge part.

[14:39] Meg: That was huge. And that was also so many people, at first, at least, really related to him because of his rage. And then there were. But then other things.

[14:48] Alex: People got to know him, and it's like, maybe he's not the everyman. We.

[14:53] Meg: Yeah, yeah. No, no. We have less in common with him than we thought.

[14:56] Alex: The thing that's chilling about this story, on a personal level, and I believe I speak for you as well, which is, like, we lived in the neighborhood that all These things were happening.

[15:04] Meg: Oh, I chose these.

[15:05] Alex: Right. I mean, I was 82. I was a college. College. I was a high school freshman and sophomore.

[15:12] Meg: You know, So I was mugged at gunpoint.

[15:15] Alex: Gunpoint.

[15:16] Meg: Gunpoint. On 92nd between Madison and 5th.

[15:21] Alex: Wow.

[15:22] Meg: And I was. I'll just tell this story really quickly.

[15:24] Alex: Yeah.

[15:24] Meg: No, but my friend Amanda and I were coming back from the bars on the west side, and we'd run out of money, which was one of the reasons we were coming home. And guess why we got out on 5th? She lived on 89th in Madison, and I lived on 92nd between park and Lex. So usually we would, like, split the difference and then split up.

[15:46] Alex: And fifth is a. You don't think a fifth is a danger? Which is probably naive because the park is right there.

[15:53] Meg: Yeah, the park is right there.

[15:53] Alex: You think? Cause also, fifth is so pretty. You know, you're like. It's kind of like Park Avenue. You wouldn't think they could bug the Park Avenue.

[15:58] Meg: We would have gone an extra block in the cab. But we. Again, cash poor, and we wanted to give a tip to the cab driver, so we got out on fist and we gave him like, 50 cents or something really awful and embarrassing. And then we were like, okay, we'll just walk the rest of the way.

[16:14] Alex: Mistake.

[16:15] Meg: Oh, my God.

[16:16] Alex: What time of day or evening was this? I'm. Obviously.

[16:18] Meg: It was like 11pm or something. It wasn't even that late. Right. And this guy jumped out, stuck a gun in my rib cage, and Amanda went running into the street, screaming towards Madison. And I just.

[16:36] Alex: I don't know if that would have been. I don't know if I'd been so down with that decision. I'm like, wait, you're gonna leave me hanging?

[16:42] Meg: You know, I mean, I honestly, like, everyone responds. It's the whole fight or flight.

[16:46] Alex: Fight or flight.

[16:47] Meg: And I froze. I was a fleas.

[16:50] Alex: She was a flea.

[16:52] Meg: And then how about this? I watched him run after her with his gun, except extended.

[16:59] Alex: Holy shit.

[17:00] Meg: And again, did not move a muscle. I just froze. And then he. She got so close to Madison that he turned back around and came back towards me.

[17:08] Alex: And you were still in the spot.

[17:09] Meg: I'm still there. I didn't take that moment to maybe go somewhere else.

[17:16] Alex: Leaving this place.

[17:17] Meg: Not very good crisis reaction. He comes back towards me, and I tossed in my bag, and he caught it like a football and kept running. Wow. And went into the park. It was a great bag. And I tell you.

[17:31] Alex: Sorry.

[17:31] Meg: I. And there were some photographs in there. They're Irreplaceable. No money, remember? We didn't have money. That's why we got an off at fifth.

[17:40] Alex: Right, of course.

[17:41] Meg: Anyway, in that neighborhood, this.

[17:44] Alex: Which just as a little, you know, context, this is technically, it's fair to call it Carnegie Hill, which is one of the most prestigious and picturesque patches of Manhattan that you could possibly want to live in. I mean, it's gorgeous, Right?

[17:58] Meg: And it is the 80s, though, right?

[18:01] Alex: Exactly. Things were still sh. Yeah, I mean. Anyway, keep going. I'm wrapped with attention.

[18:07] Meg: This next one is a good one. A 66 year old woman walking along 87th street from the Met to her apartment on Park Avenue was thrown face down on the ground by two, quote, youths. One tried to grab her ostrich skin purse while the other yanked at her heavy gold bracelet. She wasn't letting either go without a fight. This is a quote from this lady. My husband always told me to kick them, but the only way I could have kicked them was backward like Donkey. Anyway, one of them was pounding my head on the sidewalk, saying, give me the bag. Give it to me. No, I won't. I kept saying, I hit him in the head. Being English, it was subconscious to fight for what belongs to me. Like the Falklands, I suppose.

[19:00] Alex: I love. I credit you with your deep background in drama and acting that you put on the correct voice for these. What would an ostrich skin bag look like? I don't know. It sounds repulsive. When I think of an ostrich, I don't think of, like.

[19:16] Meg: Of its skin.

[19:17] Alex: Right. Yeah. I mean, you tell me. I don't have no idea.

[19:20] Meg: Actually, I'll show you something after we record.

[19:22] Alex: Okay, I'm looking forward to that.

[19:24] Meg: That I do, in fact think is ostrich skin.

[19:27] Alex: So suffice to say, it's an item that you'd want to hold.

[19:30] Meg: Yeah.

[19:30] Alex: Wanna hold on to.

[19:31] Meg: Well, she did. A guard from the Met who was on break tried to help her and the muggers pulled a knife on him.

[19:38] Alex: Jesus.

[19:39] Meg: And then ran towards Central Park. A jogger joined in the chase and the guys were ultimately arrested. The woman got off pretty easy with only broken ribs and she had some abrasions. She regretted fighting back, but said, quote, when the acid test came, I acted on reflex. In the future, I planned to carry a hundred dollars in my glove or my coat pocket to give up easily. But I'm furious that young men like these. One of them was what they call a career criminal, are allowed to walk the streets. She blamed irresponsible judges who so Indiscriminately free these muggers, rapists and killers. We need a governor who will impose the death penalty.

[20:25] Alex: Whoa, taking a little train there. But yeah.

[20:29] Meg: Yeah. And incidentally, that was the year. 1982 was the year that Democratic candidate Mario Cuomo.

[20:35] Alex: Oh, yeah.

[20:36] Meg: Refused to support the death penalty and he won anyway. There you go. Now, Janice, our nurse from the first

[20:45] Alex: story, right behind Hunter.

[20:48] Meg: Right. Her natural empathy was tested after her mugging. Quote.

[20:54] Alex: That's terrible as a nurse to think about that.

[20:56] Meg: Exactly. Quote, at first thought it was terrible that a human being was in jail as a result of evidence I had given.

[21:04] Alex: Wow.

[21:05] Meg: But I feel that to be a criminal is a personal choice and you can't blame it on the environment. It's not an excuse. I know plenty of people at the hospital and elsewhere who were poor in the ghetto and worked their way out. Another woman whose shoulder bag was cut by a man with a steak knife in late August on Madison near 87th, said, quote, I had very mixed feelings toward this guy. What's his problem? Is he just a lawbreaker or is he trying to feed five people? But I don't know. And in a way, I really don't want to know. I don't think I'm as liberal as I was five years ago. Nowadays, too many people are getting off too easily in the courts. New Yorkers began developing all kinds of tactics to outsmart the muckers. Some made replicas of their most valuable jewelry to wear out of the house. Wow. Many took self defense classes. I was telling Jo the other day, judo classes were like all the fad to protect yourself. And Joe's just like, oh, no, that's not gonna work.

[22:11] Alex: No, it's not like you're gonna suddenly break out into your stance. The thing I remember, I remember mace. Remember they had those little canisters of Mace.

[22:19] Meg: Absolutely. No, that was. Yeah, okay, I remember. And actually Alice had to take a self defense class where they advise kneeing in the groin.

[22:27] Alex: Oh, yeah, I'll do it as a standard.

[22:30] Meg: And holding keys between your fingers to stick in assailants eyes.

[22:36] Alex: Jesus.

[22:37] Meg: Gun permits. Tripled Mace, which you were talking about, was illegal in New York, but you could smuggle it in. And that's what I did.

[22:46] Alex: Did you really?

[22:47] Meg: I smuggled it in from Georgia.

[22:48] Alex: Oh, nice. Was it like the little canister that you.

[22:51] Meg: And it was like on my keychain.

[22:54] Alex: Did you ever use it? You used it? Yeah, on someone.

[22:58] Meg: Well, I mean, I was.

[22:59] Alex: For fun or.

[22:59] Meg: No, I was. I was scared and I used it but the person was far away, and I was probably overreacting.

[23:08] Alex: All right, good to know.

[23:09] Meg: I probably should not have had Mason. Well, that's why it's illegal.

[23:12] Alex: I don't trust myself with it. I would have used it probably on myself.

[23:15] Meg: I know.

[23:16] Alex: Let's see how bad this is.

[23:20] Meg: Women were advised to walk in the middle of the sidewalk rather than close to doorways or parked cars, lest they be dragged into either.

[23:28] Alex: Jesus.

[23:28] Meg: I just don't even think people talk about stuff like that.

[23:32] Alex: I'm just going to interject for a quick second. Both you and I are parents, and my kids are now in their late teens, early 20s. And you're the same, right? I mean, how old is your son?

[23:42] Meg: 18 and 22.

[23:43] Alex: Yeah. So we're about the same.

[23:44] Meg: Yeah.

[23:45] Alex: When they were little, I went out of my way to try and familiarize themselves, familiarize them with how to get around the city and, like, you know, look for a landmark, walk in that direction, that sort of thing. What do you do?

[23:56] Meg: In this instance, I would say to Alice, who do you know in this neighborhood?

[23:59] Alex: Right.

[24:00] Meg: Look around.

[24:00] Alex: Absolutely.

[24:01] Meg: You can always go to Sophie's dad's place. That's his building right there.

[24:04] Alex: You know where you are, know how to get out of where you are, know how to get to other neighborhoods. I don't know that I ever went the extra mile and said, you know, stuff like put keys between your fingers or anything like that, and, you know, knock on wood. Sorry. Like, they. They'll never need to. Like now, like, they're. My kids, both go to school overseas in places where there's. You in trouble, trouble lives everywhere. You know, there's. But they're both New Yorkers, and they both have a degree, I want to believe, of street smarts, that that is a booed in them, that they will keep them safe.

[24:37] Meg: But I'll just say, I think street smarts in 2025 is just markedly different

[24:44] Alex: than it was, right? Absolutely.

[24:46] Meg: Like, a lot. I was getting a lot of flashbacks, like, reading these stories and going, yeah, it just. It's different.

[24:54] Alex: I wonder. You'd have to speak from your experiences, but, like, when you hear it, it was like the late 70s, early 80s or early 80s, more likely, and stuff was going on and things weren't great. But my mother basically was like, well, this is where we live, and this is where you go to school. So figured out, good luck.

[25:12] Meg: This is our life.

[25:13] Alex: Right. And, you know, at the time, I

[25:14] Meg: was just gonna have to muddle through, unlike.

[25:16] Alex: I'm not patting myself in Back. But today, you know, I have a phone that I can tell you where my kids are.

[25:22] Meg: I know. I love it.

[25:23] Alex: And, and they, you know, I could see where they are in overseas, which is crazy. But back then, my mom had nothing of that. Like, it was like. So I'd be, I'd be like, oh, I'm gonna go to the Ritz and go see Black Flag. She goes, well, I don't know what that is. I don't know who you're going with. I hope I see you again. You know, there's no, like, there was no safety net there.

[25:42] Meg: I know.

[25:43] Alex: And we got through it.

[25:44] Meg: We did get through it.

[25:45] Alex: Yeah, absolutely. And I'm sure there's some that didn't, but it's like, yeah, it's. But also youth is, comes with a degree of, you know, blithe ignorance. So you're, you're not. Neither may not necessarily necessarily be aware of the dangers and the risks you're taking by doing something relatively banal as coming home from the bar at 11 o'.

[26:07] Meg: Clock. Right.

[26:08] Alex: You know, and who's, who's gonna, who would expect to be suddenly attacked at gunpoint on Fifth Avenue? I was never attacked at gunpoint. I will say that.

[26:16] Meg: And it was across the street.

[26:17] Alex: I do have to get from, from where we are to my home in the Village after this. We'll see what happens. But the night is young.

[26:26] Meg: But hopefully not other things that people were doing during this time that are just so anachronistic. Sales of pick resistant locks.

[26:34] Alex: Oh, yeah, good luck with that.

[26:36] Meg: Burglar alarms and gates soared. Devices that automatically turned lights and stereos on periodically to simulate someone being home.

[26:46] Alex: My mom still has that. My parents had that.

[26:49] Meg: It was. I mean, isn't that so wacko?

[26:51] Alex: And they go on like, mom, nobody's buying that. No one thinks you're.

[26:56] Meg: We absolutely did that. Does anybody do that now?

[27:00] Alex: Well, the old folks did, but yeah.

[27:02] Meg: One popular alarm shouted robber, robber, robber over a loudspeaker to scare off burglars. Because the fear was that people had begun to tune out all of the alarms and sirens, which went off.

[27:17] Alex: Well, what's your, what is your first reaction when you hear a car alarm go off?

[27:21] Meg: Oh, completely ignore it.

[27:22] Alex: You either you're annoyed by it, and then you like, who still has a car alarm in 2025? And then it keeps going. You're like, oh, fuck. And turn that off.

[27:30] Meg: Seriously. I'm gonna like.

[27:31] Alex: Should I not sing by?

[27:33] Meg: No, it's fine. Okay. One in ten New Yorkers polled in 1982 said they no longer left their homes alone after dark.

[27:42] Alex: After dark.

[27:44] Meg: Olga Piscopo and. And left their homes alone.

[27:47] Alex: Right.

[27:48] Meg: So fair enough, right?

[27:50] Alex: Yeah. Well, it depends what. Leaving your home to do what? Like, are you going to run around to the corner store to buy a sick pack or are you going to. I mean, it all. It all sounds very, you know, some Sam. Like I'm no longer gonna sit in parked cars with shoulder length hair and stuff like that.

[28:06] Meg: Yes. And Olga Piscopo.

[28:08] Alex: Olga Piscopo is the most outstanding name.

[28:11] Meg: Naspeth Queens, of course, said you can't go out. There are a bunch of kids who hang out in the streets even if they're not there for crime. You're afraid. Besides, where does a woman of 70 go? I watch television and crochet. So that was Olga's.

[28:28] Alex: Those are her alternatives. Outstanding. I had a problem not unlike that, and I'm not going to tell the whole story, but I lived, as you know, for a spell in my late teenage years on 86th street in Yorkville. And at one point I had a couple of run ins with a aggregation of youths that may or may not have been formally affiliated with a larger organization called the 84th Street Bombers. And in the wake of those unfortunate incidences, they started to congregate on a stoop outside of a newspaper store called Polymorphos, which was just up the block from my apartment or our apartment. And you could see that stoop from my mom's window. It sounds completely ridiculous, but on certain mornings I would look out the window to make sure the coast was clear before I left at all. And in many instances I was like, oh shit, they're out there. So I would, instead of hanging a right, I would hang a left, walk around the block, adding like 10 minutes to my commute to school or whatever to avoid them.

[29:36] Meg: Absolutely. I mean, kid on kid crime. I remember that more than anything. Kids being scared of other kids rather than like some, you know, masked man with a gun. Right?

[29:47] Alex: Yeah. Well, although, you know, you. You faced it was the guy with the gun wearing a mask or.

[29:52] Meg: No, no, he was not.

[29:54] Alex: Do you. Could you remember what he looked like?

[29:55] Meg: Absolutely not.

[29:56] Alex: Oh yeah, I'm sure not. Well, it's also like in the heat of the moment, to borrow a line from Asia, you're like, you're. I'm sure your adrenaline was pumping so quickly that you were like, oh my God, you know, like. Yeah, looking at the gun. Right?

[30:08] Meg: I was looking at the gun pretty much the whole time. Neighborhood watch patrols and tenant groups began to crop up in earnest. The perception was that the police were overwhelmed and could lend a sympathetic ear, but were unlikely to be able to protect citizens from the muggers, much less get any stolen stuff back. Some advice from the Professionals in 1982. If someone sketchy is in your vestibule, ring your own buzzer and then leave when there's no answer.

[30:40] Alex: Wow.

[30:40] Meg: If you find yourself like, well, I don't wanna walk into my home with this creepy guy. Exactly. If you're being tailed by a car, don't drive home. Sit on your horn until the police stop you. If someone is following you, walk into the middle of the street or change direction. Suddenly. If someone creepy gets off the elevator, when you do start screaming, that was it. That was like, just screaming.

[31:10] Alex: Okay, wow.

[31:11] Meg: Charlie Perrin's east side apartment was broken into three times. His response, quote, I bet I've lost about $8,000, but I won't put bars on the windows. It would be like being in jail. I'd move out of New York first.

[31:28] Alex: Well, hats off to him. That seemed like three times. What was left to take?

[31:34] Meg: I know. You know, but I love that. He's just like, the island aesthetics of my windows are really important to me.

[31:42] Alex: Oh, my God.

[31:43] Meg: I've got a crazy statistic for you.

[31:46] Alex: Hit me.

[31:47] Meg: So felonies. You know what felony is? Felonies are murder, rape, robbery, felony assault, burglary, grand larceny, and grand larceny auto. So that's what felonies are according to the 23rd Precinct, which is what we've been talking about for most of this story, which was our. Where was more or less.

[32:11] Alex: Where was the headquarters of 23rd Precinct?

[32:13] Meg: I don't know where the headquarters are, but it's 96 to 142nd.

[32:17] Alex: Right?

[32:18] Meg: Right. And it's, you know, the east side.

[32:20] Alex: Right.

[32:21] Meg: So there were 8,648 reported felonies in the 23rd Precinct in 1982. Guess how many in 2024. Same precinct.

[32:36] Alex: Wait, what was the previous number again? Sorry. 8,982.

[32:41] Meg: 8,648.

[32:43] Alex: Jesus. And how many was it? 24.

[32:45] Meg: Four.

[32:46] Alex: I'm sure it's a number that's gonna depress me. Or not. I don't know. Tell me. Go ahead, hit me.

[32:52] Meg: 859.

[32:54] Alex: Wow. And we still bitch and moan about how shitty things are. I mean, 8,000, that's just like the wild, wild West. I guess. That's really different.

[33:07] Meg: It was really different, but it's.

[33:09] Alex: It speaks to something that that informs both of our projects, both my silly blog and your podcast, which is. There's a lot of, you know, nostalgia porn, for lack of a better term, of this period of New York city in the 80s and, like the bad old days. But it was the same time. Like, this same era was such a fertile time for pop culture and art and, you know, punk and disco and hip hop and everything was coming up. But there was a lot of goddamn crime. And it's not just some Sam and all the other stuff, but it's like felonies and misdemeanors writ large, and that speaks to it, which is like, no, it really was that bad.

[33:45] Meg: Yeah.

[33:46] Alex: And now it's like, there's still crime. Absolutely. But not. Surely not on the same scale. Wow.

[33:54] Meg: I know. Isn't that nuts? And they didn't talk about in any of these articles, but did you ever hear people having their earrings snatched?

[34:02] Alex: I believe I did. Yeah. I mean, I. Not someone. As someone who never wore earrings. It didn't. You know, I had an older sister who I think had. That was a concern of hers.

[34:12] Meg: Yeah. She'd wear hoops and stuff we weren't allowed to wear. Dang. We could only wear studs because people would grab the earrings and run.

[34:22] Alex: Oh, yikes. I'm trying to think of things I had stolen from. I had a bicycle stolen right out from under me. And it's funny, I was thinking about that anecdote while you were speaking. I remember right after the incident, right after my friend Danny and I were in the middle. We were at your Bethesda Fountain, and we're sitting on our bikes, just taking a break, and these two Baker kids come up, and it's very obvious that they're going to win this exchange. And off they went. And I think my last memory of that was, like, me telling the guy who took my bike, okay, well, you know, the left pedal could use some tightening, and you might need to, like, giving him tips. Anyway, so suddenly our. Our bikes become their bikes, and they go away, and we're incredulous, and we're walking around, of course, we run into two cops right on cue. And so we get in their squad car and they take a leisurely drive around the park. I'm like, gentlemen, they're out of the park right now.

[35:14] Meg: This is not affected.

[35:15] Alex: And then we go back to the. That precinct right in the middle of Central park, you know.

[35:20] Meg: Yes.

[35:20] Alex: Where they brought Robert Chambers.

[35:21] Meg: Yes.

[35:22] Alex: And they bring out these hulking photo albums, and I'm like, this is no time for family pictures. We start going through them, like, looking for, you know, looking at mug shots. I'm like, this isn't going to help.

[35:34] Meg: You know, what if you did find

[35:36] Alex: the person that would, like, all right, is that guy. Yeah, whatever. You go do something about it. Our bikes were out of the park and probably disassembled and, you know, whatever. We never got our bikes back. We walked, you know, it was terrible. But I love the nypd. God bless him. God bless him.

[36:03] Meg: So what do you have for me, Alex?

[36:05] Alex: Oh, boy. Is it my turn? It is. Wow. Okay. All right. So I thought really long and hard about this, and I've got some very big shoes to fill. Of course. Hi, Jessica. And given that the topic of New York city in the 80s is the very lifeblood of what both of us really do, I decided to concentrate on a story that I put up on. This is not. Honestly, I don't mean this to be self serving. I posted this on my blog a couple of years ago and it continues to resonate. And which is why I thought maybe it's got some legs. And hopefully it. There's a lot of tendrils to this story. I am continually shocked by how it continues to develop. So hopefully that will come through in my telling of it. And in keeping with tradition, I know I have to have an engagement question. So my engagement question to you, Meg, is have you ever been stopped in your tracks by a bit of graffiti?

[36:59] Meg: Oh, God. You're gonna help me remember what it's called. It's Rev.

[37:03] Alex: Yep. Cost. Revs and cost.

[37:05] Meg: The specific one that I think was on, I don't know if it still is, but was on one of the bridges. And I just remember seeing it as we were, you know, driving out of town and just being like, how did they do that?

[37:24] Alex: How?

[37:25] Meg: I mean, it doesn't make any sense. I mean, it's like death defying. And then always just whenever I would see Rev Kost all over the city.

[37:33] Alex: Yeah, they were incredibly prolific.

[37:35] Meg: They were prolific, but also like, part of their whole thing was that sort of like, danger element.

[37:40] Alex: There is another guy. And this is. This is only tangentially related to my post, but. Or my story, I should say. I guess his tag is Rams R A M S. And I don't know where he's from or what his real backstory is, but he's become renowned for. He must have, like, rappelling gear because he will do these tremendous tags that run the length of buildings. I work downtown. I work around Tribeca Financial District, and He has a number of these pieces, but the most impressive one. And impressive is a relative term here, because while I'm impressed by it, other people are horrified by it. There's a building on. Gosh, what street is it? It's, like, right between West Broadway and Church at Vesey or maybe Park Place, I don't know. And basically, it's this tremendous high rise that was abandoned in 2020. Like, construction closed down in 2020, presumably because of COVID and the investors pulled out. And it's been dormant ever since. It's this tremendous monolithic rod that looms over lower Manhattan, one of those. And there's no progress. And as I understand it, the department of Builders Buildings, I guess, inspect. There's a crane that windmills around, or it doesn't. It sort of weather vanes around disconcertingly, honestly, they come and inspect and make sure it's cool, but there's been no progress.

[39:08] Meg: Oh, my God.

[39:09] Alex: So at some point in the last couple years, this tagger Rams somehow gained access, went to the top of this tremendous tower, and on each side of the uppermost facade wrote his, you know, tag Rams.

[39:25] Meg: Amazing.

[39:26] Alex: But it's like, really impress. It's like, all right, some people think it's an atrocity because it looks like urban desolation. And there's some credible thought there. But it's also, like. I look at him, like, oh, the ball.

[39:39] Meg: Exactly. To do that.

[39:42] Alex: And in a weird way, he actually provided, in a backhanded way, he lent the issue new credence. Because it's like, this building has been dormant for years and nothing is being done about it. And now you've got somebody, like, tagging it up, like, so maybe there's a little more momentum in, like, somebody, you know, fixing the problem. But it's like, you look at it from the street, and it's like, how on God, it's green earth did he pull that off? It's really impressive.

[40:09] Meg: There's one other thing. Please go again. You have to help me with the names of things. But when Billy was really little, we would take these adventures together. And one of our adventures was to take the subway out so you could see five points. Five points out of five points was so cool out of the subway window.

[40:28] Alex: I actually went on a pilgrimage a couple of years ago, before they closed it, before it was torn down. And it's just art everywhere. It was like this explosion of color. Yeah.

[40:38] Meg: How they could decide that, like, a condo has any sort of value. There is just.

[40:44] Alex: People suck.

[40:45] Meg: People suck.

[40:46] Alex: That's really the bottom line. But, yeah, I know. I was a huge fan. I mean, I didn't. I didn't understand, like, there's a whole culture there that I know nothing about. But it was just like this. It was like this great, tremendous outdoor explosion of expression. It was just fun to go check it out. Okay, so that's my engagement Crispin. So I'm gonna dive into this. At some point in the early to mid-80s, as is topical for this blog or this podcast, there was a punk rocker named Fran Powers, and he was from a band called Modern Clicks, C L I X. He started spray painting the name of his band all over lower Manhattan. As one does, or as one did, I should say. Remember, this is the 80s. Manhattan is a lawless badlands. Rampant graffiti is the least of its problems. As we covered in the first part of this podcast, Fran, in his efforts to evangelize the name of his band, hits a number of spots around lower Manhattan. I vividly remember one on a storefront on Astor Place. He had turned this sort of garage door into this tableau. And the insignia of the band was like this sort of figure throwing a spear. It was really eye catching. I didn't know what it was. I didn't know it was a band, but it was just something. Wow, what's that? And he did that a lot. In the interest of this story, he hit a very specific corner of a building adjacent to a streetlight pole. Just remember that, okay? Some point after that, there's another fabled street artist named Richard Hambleton. If that name rings a bell, that's because he was renowned for painting the cryptic shadow men.

[42:25] Meg: Oh, my God. I was gonna tell the story at some point, and you're gonna tell the story.

[42:29] Alex: Well, I'm gonna tell part of the story. You can still tell the story.

[42:32] Meg: Awesome. No, no, no, because I'll tell you why my cousin Taylor was obsessed. He also grew up in the city obsessed with Shadow Man. And he was like, you've got to find out what's up with this.

[42:42] Alex: It's great. It's amazing. Okay, so Richard Hamilton was renowned for painting the shadow men, which are these somewhat ominous black silhouettes of human forms. And you would see them on corners and on, like, loading docks and incongruous places. But they're all very naturalistic. They looked like human form. I mean, you. If you looked at it twice, you might think there's an individual standing there. And in this instance, he had augmented Fran Power's tag of his band's name. On that particular corner, making it look like the Shadow man was kind of leaning against it. And during this, it's like they're communicating with each other. It's like these are tags that are interacting with each other. And during this era, Hamilton's figures were all over downtown. I don't remember it, but there was allegedly one down my street on 12th street that I've seen pictures of. Since I'm like, I don't remember seeing that, but if you look really, really hard, I don't know if there's any left. I really kind of doubt it. There was one on Greenwich street for a long time that I remember seeing, but it's probably gone at some point. And now we're talking 1982 again. There's a preeminent musician, Argentine rocker, pop star from Argentina, obviously named Charlie Garcia. If I had to draw a parallel for what sort of type of music Charlie made, he's kind of like Argentina's answer to Peter Gabriel. Like he made sort of very forward thinking pop music, but with firmly rooted in a lot of traditions. But it was really distinctive. And as I've become a fan and since this whole thing broke, it's really good. I don't speak Spanish, I don't know what he's thinking about nine times out of 10, but it's great stuff. Charlie is also distinctive in that his, his look was. He had a mustache and half the mustache was white and half the mustache was black. That I don't know what that's about, but anyway, that's him anyway. At this point in 1982, Charlie Garcia sequesters himself in Greenwich Village, where he's recording an album at nearby Electric lady Studios on West 8th Street. The backstory is that Charlie was so enamored with the music coming out of New York at the time, especially out of Electric lady, which had been built by Jimi Hendrix and a million amazing artists had recorded music there, like Patti Smith and the Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Lou Reed, Blondie Chic, Kiss, the Clash that he dec. Decided that's where I want to make my next album. So he decamps to New York and he rents an apartment on Waverly Place and he marches over to Electric Lady Studios sight unseen and shows up at the door with a lot of bills saying, I want to record here. And I think it was this producer named Joe Blaney, who, I'll correct that name if it's not right later. And he said, okay. And so they, they accommodated him and he started to make it happen. So he starts working on this record, and he already has a title in mind for the record. And he's really tapping into the energy and the sound of New York City. Remember, this is New York City in 1982. There's like post punk happening and no wave and like mutant disco. And it's the era of the big clubs and like the Mud Club and danceateria and Studio 54 is still going. And it's just things are popping. I don't want to say things aren't popping now because I'm 58 and old and in the way. But it was a more fertile era of New York City pop culture that I just don't think exists anymore. And so he was all excited about that, as he should be. So, anyway, so he's recording his record and he's got a title picked out, and he's all excited and he goes out for a walk around Lower Manhattan one day with a photographer named. I'm going to get a lot of these names wrong because I don't speak Spanish, so I'm going to apologize for that in advance. Uberto Sagramosa. So he and Uberto are walking around Lower Manhattan and they come across a certain street corner and they spy this richly compelling tableau of graffiti centered around a tag that says, wait for it, Modern Clicks. And so taken is Charlie by this. He's like, take my picture. And he goes. And he sits underneath the tableau of the. It turns out it's Richard Hamilton's Shadow Man, Fran's Modern Click's tag. There's actually another tag in the photo by a renowned graffiti artist named Zephyr, who better snaps a pic, and that's that. The resultant image so touches Charlie, it's like, forget it, that's our album cover. And the album title is now Clix Modernos, which is, of course, managed for Modern Clicks. He scraps his original plans and makes Sagramosa's photo the COVID imager's new record, and that's that.

[47:41] Meg: Is that okay?

[47:43] Alex: Interesting question, because you gotta remember, are

[47:45] Meg: you allowed to do that?

[47:46] Alex: It's 1982, so everyone's. There is no Internet.

[47:50] Meg: Right.

[47:50] Alex: Charlie Garcia has no idea that Modern Clicks is Intellectual Property by Frank Powers. Now, probably in 1982, the whole concept of intellectual property was kind of in its infancy. Good point. But he thought, like, this is cool. I think this looks great. This sums up the spirit of the music I'm making. New York. It's raw, it's cool, it's hip, whatever. Let's do it. Time passes. Clix Modernos Garcia's second solo album, gradually becomes one of the most celebrated Argentine rock albums of all time.

[48:26] Meg: Wow.

[48:27] Alex: Don't believe me? Go to Wikipedia. More time passes. Rabid Argentine rock fans of a certain stripe start speculating about the whereabouts of this now to them iconic street corner pictured on the sleeve of Klix Medeiros. Of course, more time passes. Cut to 2011. Actress, photographer Brooke Smith, most renowned for her work in the Silence of the Lambs she played.

[48:56] Meg: I know who she is.

[48:57] Alex: You might even know her.

[48:58] Meg: Yeah, no, but I ordered her book.

[49:00] Alex: Oh, she's great.

[49:01] Meg: Cause she took pictures of the Sunday's Sunday bandai.

[49:05] Alex: Right, we're getting to that. Oh my God.

[49:08] Meg: I'll show it to you in a few minutes.

[49:10] Alex: No, I own it.

[49:11] Meg: Of course you own it.

[49:12] Alex: Sorry. So Brooke Smith is an actress.

[49:15] Meg: Tell who she is in Silence of Lambs.

[49:18] Alex: She is. Is it the senator's daughter or the.

[49:20] Meg: Yeah, she's the girl who's. Who's.

[49:22] Alex: She's down the. Well, if she doesn't put the lotion back in the basket, she gets the hose again. That's. She's. Catherine.

[49:29] Meg: It was such an incredible performance.

[49:30] Alex: Oh, it's a brilliant performance.

[49:32] Meg: But she also hung out in New York. Okay, sorry.

[49:35] Alex: Well, she also. I really want to give her her due props because obviously she's in Silence of Lambs, which is this iconic, viscerally memorable performance, but she has actually a storied career. She's been on a number of television series. Oh yeah, she's great. And she's also. And I've gotten to know her in the wake of all this and she's a lovely, lovely human being. I hope she listens to this and she knows this because I think she's the greatest.

[49:59] Meg: Anyway, I'm so excited you have had contact.

[50:02] Alex: Oh, I believe you. This story. We're not even ankle deep into this. So before she became an actress. Actor. Actress. I'm never quite sure what I say, actor, but whatever. She was a member of the burgeoning New York hardcore punk community. And the thing that made Brooke remarkable is that she thought to document it.

[50:24] Meg: Yep.

[50:25] Alex: So all her friends are in bands and like Agnostic Front and the CRO Mags and Murphy's Law and all these bands that I hold sacred. And she was pals with them all, you know, and then she brought her camera along and even as a novice photographer, the resultant images are striking. Like even from a composition angle, they're just amazing. They completely document the scene, the sound, the sights, the smells.

[50:48] Meg: I will Definitely post about this on Instagram too, with a link where you can get it.

[50:52] Alex: The book is fabulous.

[50:54] Meg: Gorgeous.

[50:55] Alex: So before there was a book, she posted them online.

[50:58] Meg: Okay.

[50:58] Alex: She posted a clutch of her period specific photographs for Time as a member of the then burgeoning hardcore punk scene on Laurie's side. Captivated by same on my stupid blog. I posted an entry about Brooke's photos and I noticed a recurring face in all these scene photos. These are her friends. These are. These are punk rockers she was hanging out with. These are the hardcore kids. And that was this one guy, Fran Powers. He was in many different bands like Ultra Violence, Whole Wild World, east of Eden, but most importantly, Modern Cliques, an amorphous ensemble that played sort of an amalgam of styles like rock. Scott. They weren't strictly punk or hardcore. They also played like reggae and funk and they were a very ambitious band. Like they did, they ventured outside of the norm. And he seemed like a sort of interesting guy for those pictures. I rightly deduced that Fran was responsible for his own brand of cryptic graffiti, that being the Modern Clicks insignia of the spear throwing figure I'd seen on Astor Place, which I'd remembered seeing as you know, several years earlier. He also had a shock of dirty blond spiky hair or dreadlocks. He was a very memorable looking guy. You saw him once, you're going to remember that guy. So remember that at some point. We're moving on. In the mid 2010s, I meet a woman named Yuki Oda. Yuki Oda is a blogger who starts a blog called the Soho Memory Project. I don't know if you ever checked it out.

[52:21] Meg: Yes, I have.

[52:22] Alex: It's great.

[52:23] Meg: No, I reference it all the time.

[52:25] Alex: She is absolutely delightful and she lovingly said like, oh, you know, you were my stupid blog inspired her to start it or was partly inspired. So she may have been blowing smoke, but it was a lovely thing to say. It's a loving tribute to the neighborhood of her youth. She grew up when Soho was sort of an artist community and it was all those buildings, whatever. So she and I started comparing notes and sharing assets of our respective web projects. I would send her all my photos that I'd taken of Soho and she would post them and all that and we became friends. At some point her blog really took off and she's way more professional and, you know, concise said there's no typos on her blog. You know, like it's very, it's very well put together, unlike mine. And she decides after I don't know if it was an anniversary party, whatever, but she had at a party for the. For the blog, and it was obviously in Soho. So I went, you know, my wife and I went and, you know, we partook. And on our way out of the party, like, we stayed and had a couple of drinks and chatted with Yuki. But there was all these people that wanted to, like, pick her in, prick her brain. She's like, oh, whatever. And we're sort of making an Irish exit. And there was an elevator that went from the party space to the street. And as I'm exiting the elevator as an individual getting on. And who is it but Fran Powers.

[53:43] Meg: I recognize him, right?

[53:44] Alex: I recognize him from Brooke's pictures.

[53:46] Meg: And you haven't seen him since he was 16 years old?

[53:48] Alex: No, I don't really know the guy, right. And so I say, holy shit, you're friend Powers Bonnet clicks. And he's like, what? You know, he's not used to being, you know, modern. Clicks never made it. They weren't like. It's not like running into a member of the Village People. Like, he was like. It was kind of an esoteric thing

[54:06] Meg: a few decades ago, right?

[54:08] Alex: And so I'm like, you're Fred Powers. And suddenly we start chatting about punk rock stuff and, you know, we're off and running. So we're friends. So now it's about 2015. I'm sorry this story's taking so long. This is wonderful.

[54:21] Meg: Are you kidding?

[54:22] Alex: And my wife goes to London for the London Book Fair. And I'm left alone in our apartment to my own devices, which is great because I can watch the movies that she's sick of watching or whatever. And I sit down to watch, I think it's safe to say, a mutual favorite film of ours, which is After Hours. Oh, yes, it's my favorite.

[54:41] Meg: It's back over and over again.

[54:43] Alex: It is the one common thread on both of our.

[54:47] Meg: You know, it's one of my son's favorite movies too.

[54:50] Alex: God bless him.

[54:50] Meg: All right. And I'm like, I raised a good one.

[54:52] Alex: There you go. So I'm sitting down to watch After Hours, my favorite movie of all time, for literally the bajillionth time this time, however. And it is one of those films that, to me, keeps revealing new things every time I watch it. I know that sounds like hyperbole, but it really is. And this time I am smacked across the face by something that I've never noticed before. And it's that Fran Powers has a cameo in the movie oh, my God. I'm like, what the fuck? All right. The cameo in question is Paul Hackett goes to Club Berlin to find Kiki and Horst because things are going wrong and he needs to get in, he needs to meet with them, he needs to solve this problem. But he's confronted by a completely unsympathetic bouncer whose name is Charlie. And somehow it's like, tonight is Mohawk night. If you get a Mohawk, you can get him for free. And so eventually, Paul Hackett convinces Charlie to let him in, and Paul is forcibly led through the door and roughly led into a barber chair in the middle of a mosh pit, basically. And Charlie's words, as he's dispatching Paul Hackett to the handlers there, it's Mohawk this guy. And as they're about to do that, there's a guy in the chair getting a mohawk. Fran Powers. And I'm like, that's fucking Fran Powers. So I immediately said, like, you're in fucking After Hours. And he's like, yeah, I am.

[56:26] Meg: I would lead with that with anyone I ever met.

[56:29] Alex: I was so blown away. I mean, I was already impressed with the guy, but I was like, you have no idea. So I said, would you be. Can I interview you about your experience working on Cor Sketchy Flick? And he did, and it's on my blog and you can find it. So that's just a little more about Frampowers 2017. We're getting closer to the fruition here. Richard Hamilton dies at the age of 65, and he is sadly oblivious to the fact that his signature artwork graces the COVID of one of the most beloved album cover Argentine rock covers ever. He has no idea that his work is on the COVID of Clix Maderos. Because you know why here in New York City, let alone America, nobody knows who Charlie Garcia is. Sorry. And I mean that with all respect. It's a Latin music. Latin pop. Latin rock has gotten inroads in the last few years. My own daughter listens to people like Bad Bunny and J Balvine and people that, you know, a million years ago would never have gotten airplay on on domestic radio, but at the time, no one knows who an Argentine rock star is. 2019, case in point, a friend of mine sends me a link to a video by an artist named Jahly Garcia, who I've never heard of. And it's a song called Fanky F A N K Y which was shot around Lower. He sent it to me because it was shot around lower Manhattan in Soho. And I was like, oh, that's cool. But then I connect the dots and I realize I have heard of this guy because of. I've seen the sleeve of Clix Modernos. I don't know why, but I was always like, image. The image of Charlie sitting beneath that tag. I'm like, isn't that Fran Powers band Speculating? I was like, does Fran know about this? That his band name was appropriated basically for an album that Garcia had appropriated, which at the time I was unaware of its seismic significance to Latin American rock. So now it's 2021. I'm deep into my stupid blog and I'm always doing. I'm constantly looking for photographs of period specific images of New York City or the New York City of my youth, or our youth, I should say. And I'm a member of a Facebook group or Facebook page called Manhattan before 1990.

[58:47] Meg: Yes.

[58:47] Alex: Which is a great trove of images.

[58:49] Meg: I can concur. That is. It's a great.

[58:52] Alex: It's fabulous. And I'm very proud to be a member and I thank them for their work. And there's a. I believe he's Swedish. I hope I'm getting this right. There's a Swedish contributor to that page named Bo G. Erickson. And in 2021, he decides to post a series of Pictures from his 1984 trip to New York City. Among those photographs is a photograph looking south from Canal street down Cortland Alley. Cortland Alley is a very celebrated street in Manhattan. It's been featured in any number of films because it is the quintessential New York City alley. It's actually quite unique. There's not a lot of alleys in

[59:37] Meg: New York, but it could be from, you know, 1801, or it could be from 1975.

[59:45] Alex: And it exudes so much atmosphere. It's like this sort of canyon, like high walled. It's like the second you look down at it, it's just iconic. It's amazing. And iconic in the very literal term of the word. So he posts a series of photos of Cortland Alley snapped in 1984, a year after the release of Clix Modernos. And looking down the street where Cortland intersects with Walker Walker Street, I spot the graffiti that is the same graffiti that graces the COVID of Clicks Paternalist. I'm like, oh, I know what that is. And I thought, oh, that's kind of funny. And I post that to my stupid blog because that's what I do. I mean, it's like, it's minutiae, it's trivia and nobody. This isn't going to save anybody's life. It's not triage. It's just. I find it really fascinating. So I post that. And I don't ask Beau for permission. Sorry, Bo.

[01:00:47] Meg: But you give him credit.

[01:00:48] Alex: I think I give him credit. I'm like, hey, look what I found on Manhattan before 1990. Snapped by Bo Erickson. Here's a shot. Whatever. I'm sure Beau doesn't give a rolling rat fuck, but whatever. So I do. Some short time later, back in Argentina, a writer producer named Inaki Rojas somehow sees my post and falls out of his chair with excitement. He writes a very long and detailed missive to me about it, explaining how he'd been on a quest to divine the origins of the clique Moderna's cover and how my post had solved several riddles for him and enabled him to reach directly out to Fran. They become friends. What, so suddenly, like, as he put it to me, like, imagine if nobody knew where Abbey Road was.

[01:01:33] Meg: Right? Exactly. And someone discovered it, and you discovered it.

[01:01:36] Alex: You anthropologized. I didn't necessarily mean to, and I didn't think it would have this sort of impact, but so. And he's this guy, Adaki Rojas, who's a lovely guy, by the way. He starts doing a web series about it, about the whole thing. Once again, I don't speak Spanish, so I have really no idea what he was saying. But he cites me and he does this painstaking replication of the process as I'm doing now. So. And he reaches out to Fran and he and Fran get into contact. Fran's kind of bemused by the whole idea. Like, he's like, oh, okay, you know, all right, that's cool. And Fran's still making music, by the way. Fran, by this point, had married a lovely lady named Shoei and moved to Japan and sadly was ill. But he and Inaki became friends. And I think they actually even recorded music together in the sort of file sharing sort of way. And it was lovely. And there's always plans for, like, let's all get together. And it would be fun to bring all these. It would be great to bring all these remote tendrils together. June of 2021. Oh, no. My friend Fran Powers passed away after coming to an illustrious. He'd been long battling.

[01:02:44] Meg: I'm so sorry.

[01:02:45] Alex: And, you know, I only. Literally only met the guy a handful of times, but he was. We were. Most of our relationship was online correspondence, and he was always great. And he was a Super creative guy. Like, he just always had some new project in the works. Very sad. So in the wake of that, Inaki Rojas, the filmmaker, documentarian, spurs the interest of an actor named Mariano Cabrera, who, among many other. He's an actor, but among many other distinctions, he's the artistic director and co founder of the New York Acting Alliance. And through his, I can only imagine, his charismatic tenacity, Mariano reaches out to the powers that be and somehow petitions the city of New York to dedicate a plaque commemorating this culturally significant site, that being the corner of Walker and Cortland Alley.

[01:03:41] Meg: What?

[01:03:42] Alex: And succeeds.

[01:03:44] Meg: That's amazing, right?

[01:03:46] Alex: And we're all like, huh? So In November of 2023, sure enough, there is a dedication ceremony. I go, shoei Powers. Franz Widow goes. My friend Yuki Oda goes. Brooke couldn't make it, but as many people who are sort of tenuously connected, they showed up. I'm there, and I went. I had to go to work. I worked not too far from there, and I was like, I'm gonna check out a little early because there's this thing happening, and I don't know it was gonna be there, but whatever. It was. Fucking bod. I. I took a million pictures. I'll share them with you. Members of Charlie's band showed up. Charlie himself. Charlie Gracia is now in his, let's say, his autumn years, and traveling around isn't as simple as it might otherwise be. I don't know. Charlie is, as I understand it, is a very eccentric character. But I think he was very tickled that this was happening. He's like, I'm gonna go to New York and tell the taxi driver to bring me to the corner of Walker and Me. But his band showed up and they played a bunch of favorites from the album. Which, by the way, since this all uncorked, I got myself a copy of the record.

[01:04:58] Meg: Yeah, I mean, I hope we can listen to it.

[01:05:00] Alex: No, it's really good.

[01:05:01] Meg: I mean, it's like Spotify, right?

[01:05:02] Alex: Oh, yeah, totally on Spotify. And again, I don't speak Spanish, and I gather his lyrics are brilliant. But. And he's gone. He's worked with Sting. I think he was slated to work with Bjork at one point. He is a really amazing artist, and it's become a favorite record of mine. I think I listened to it divorced of this whole association. I think it's great and I highly recommend it. Anyway, so there was a dedication ceremony. The band showed up, played a bunch of favorites. Fran Powers traveled Franflower's widow traveled from Japan. Yukiota was there. Producer Joe Blaney. I got the name right. He showed up. He's now like. He has this wicked long beard. He looks like Gandalf. And it was this amazing event. I'm like, like, who knew that there were this many Charlie Garcia fans in New York City? Inspired by that, I wrote to my. I had already done this a while back. There's a blog called Tribeca Citizen, which, because I work in Tribeca, I'm sort of invested in what goes on in Tribeca. I love Tribeca. I mean, it's become kind of this affluent hotbed of idiocy, but there's still dinner in neighborhood to me. And so I reached out to Tribeca Citizen, saying, like, I got a story for you. There's this amazing thing happened. I basically unspooled the same bullshit I just gave you. Not bullshit, but, you know, and she's like, great, go ahead and do it. And so I'm like, okay. So I write a story, and she very nicely posts it, and I give her my photographs of how big the mob was and all that. And depressingly, he even here in 2020. At the time, I guess it was 2023. There's all sorts of provincial. Like, Charlie Garcia is not from. I don't even know who he is. I've never heard of him.

[01:06:42] Meg: Wait, who's saying that?

[01:06:43] Alex: The readers of Tribeca Citizen. They're like, why does he get a corny. And Robert De Niro doesn't have one.

[01:06:49] Meg: All right, people, you just need to.

[01:06:50] Alex: I was like, so I was very invested in this, obviously, and I still am. And I started responding to him like, look, there's a world outside of New York City. And while Charlie Garcia, who never claimed to be from or of New York,

[01:07:04] Meg: but clearly a New York enthusiast and

[01:07:07] Alex: namrative New York came here, and it's like, I'm also. You know, there's all this sort of, I'm a native New Yorker, and I was born here. You were. No. You actually moved here.

[01:07:17] Meg: I was not born here. I moved here when I was seven years old.

[01:07:19] Alex: That's fine. Thank you. There's this thing about, like, oh, native New York. You know what? Calculate a list of people you think for whatever reason, whether the sensibility or their art or their stance on issues or their contributions to pop culture of who you think are quintessential New Yorkers, I guarantee you most of them are from somewhere else, and they came here to reinvent themselves. Being a native New Yorker is great. I Don't regret it for a second. But the only real advantage is maybe we have a little bit of an edge on how to get around them. That's really the only difference. So whether you're from New York or not, New York obviously touched Charlie in this tremendous way. And the resultant art touched a nation of people. And I say that.

[01:08:06] Meg: And we're a city of immigrants.

[01:08:08] Alex: We are a city. Yes, very true. True to Anaki Rojas prediction, it's Charlie Garcia Corner Walker in Cortland has now become comparable to Abbey Road in that I walk down Cortland Alley literally every day on my way to work. And more often than not, I see people replicating that photograph. If you don't believe me and you may not, there is an Instagram page called Los Chicos a la. I'm going to get this wrong. Los Chicos a la en la escuina, which I believe, and pardon me if I'm wrong, is Spanish for the guys in the alley. And all it does is document people replicating the COVID of Clix Madeiros. At last count, there are 942 entries on that book blog. This is a. Like, when I try to explain that to the readers of Tribeca Citizen, they're like, no, you have no idea. This is of tremendous significance to a wide body of people around the world, right? And they're like, well, he's not from New York, whatever. And people, it's Tribeca Citizen, which is

[01:09:17] Meg: a lovely blog, I'm sure it is, but.

[01:09:19] Alex: And she said too, like, don't, don't be put off. Like, our readers could be gruff, well,

[01:09:24] Meg: you know, provincial, I think is for it.

[01:09:27] Alex: It's depressing. But like I said, the Instagram pages, look, there is an official Charlie Garcia corner page and there's also. But the Instagram page is Los Chicos a la en Lascuina. Again, apologies for my non Spanish speaking tongue. And to this day you can go to that corner and there's graffiti all over the right pole. It's just like if you go to Windmill Lane in Dublin where YouTube recorded all their stuff, or you go to Abbey Road, or you go to the Black Sabbath bench in Birmin, England, it's become this shrine for a musician and a, you know, a bit of pop culture that means a great deal to

[01:10:06] Meg: London and the graffiti artist too. I mean, they're all so much stuff. The Shadow man. That is so amazing.

[01:10:13] Alex: And I do think a larger piece on Richard Hamilton would be. Well, I mean, I only briefly touched on him.

[01:10:19] Meg: No, it is definitely on my list. It has been for a couple of years. It's just hard to get the information

[01:10:24] Alex: right and it's all so far flung and you know, but anyway, I was. This is this story kind of over. This, you know, consumed me for like a couple of years because it was just like it kept going. Yay. All right, well, that worked out well.

[01:10:37] Meg: Amazing.

[01:10:38] Alex: To this day, I'm still. I'm still in touch with Mariana and Anaki Rojas there. There was a documentary and I was actually interviewed for a documentary like in 2024. I don't know where that ever went. Oh, there was also the same day as that ribbon cutting ceremony when they unveiled the plaque. The plaque is there now. There was an event at the. The Argentine embassy. I couldn't go. I had a work conflict. But you know, they're supposed now every November there's. There's some new thing. I. I don't. There may be something coming up this coming November. I'll go if I can, you know, but.

[01:11:09] Meg: Incredible.

[01:11:10] Alex: Keep.

[01:11:10] Meg: Let us know and I'll post about it and make even bigger.

[01:11:14] Alex: Sorry, I've got. This is the original post. There's pictures all over it.

[01:11:18] Meg: Oh, awesome. God, look at that. That is so not what I imagined. Isn't that funny? I had. When you were talking, I had in my head what the graffiti was that I was just like reading in my head.

[01:11:29] Alex: The thing.

[01:11:30] Meg: This is not.

[01:11:32] Alex: I think I put the album cover in there. If you keep going. But the. Yeah, that's basically it.

[01:11:37] Meg: Oh my God, that is incredible. He's also so sexy. Sorry.

[01:11:42] Alex: Well, be sure to pass that on. Yeah, it's. Oh. Oh. There's a quick coda that story, if I may. Some really good friends of ours from our kids grade school just down the street here or nearby, our kids went to Epiphany. They're not there now. Don't look for them. But this family who we're very close to, their daughter was about to go spend a semester in Argentina and they had us over for dinner as sort of a going away thing because my daughter and her daughter, their daughter were very close and this was all still relatively fresh. And so I started laboriously bloviating, as I've just been doing for the past half hour about this story. And basically I thought she was just politely listening, like, oh, this windbag friend of my dad's. And then she went to Buenos Aires and she came back in May and called me up, said, I've got a present for you. And I was like, like what? And I went down and she had gotten a vinyl. She bought me the record, the original vinyl Argentine pressing of the record. And. Which is just a very sweet. The fact that she even remembered it was amazing. And I was just like, oh, that's really sweet. So I have it framed in my office at work, but that's lovely. Yay. Young people aren't all bad after all.

[01:13:14] Meg: Alex, that was. I'm just blown away. I am still like digesting everything that you just said. It just makes me so happy. Like you were talking about tendrils, but like the fact that it all comes back together and just like, why have they beautiful story about community.

[01:13:32] Alex: Well, the thing, by the way, I so appreciate that because I was really paranoid that it was gonna sound like this completely muddled mess. But the thing that I love about it is that all these different disparate people from different walks of life and different levels all come together in this one story. And it's also kind of. Kind of has a happy ending, you know, like it's. Which is nice and rare.

[01:13:56] Meg: Yeah.

[01:13:57] Alex: And I made friends as a result of it. It, you know, in the same way that I met you guys, you and Jessica, through these things. That's one of the things that I was so. One of the reasons I was so terrified about losing my blog was that like this has given me. This has enriched and informed my life in such a. Such a massive way that the idea of that going away was just unthinkable and panic inducing.

[01:14:21] Meg: Thank goodness. Right.

[01:14:23] Alex: So, yeah, no, I was really, you know, and ultimately the role I played in the fruition of the story is kind of minor. I didn't take the photo. I just self angelized the photo, you know, and figured out the. Connected the dots.

[01:14:39] Meg: Exactly. Connected the dots. Right. So you know what we do at the end? We always do a tie in.

[01:14:43] Alex: Oh, tie in. Oh, shit.

[01:14:45] Meg: I mean, we have the easy one. 1982.

[01:14:48] Alex: Right? 1982 makes perfect sense. Oh, I didn't think of the tie in shit. I think 1982.

[01:14:53] Meg: Yeah. Let's just keep it with 1982. Keep it simple. Stupid.

[01:14:56] Alex: What were you doing? Here's a question. What were you doing in 1982?

[01:14:58] Meg: What were you doing in 1982?

[01:15:00] Alex: 1982. I was living on, like I said, on 93rd Street. I was still living. My mom was still married to my stepfather. I would have been either finishing freshman year or starting sophomore year of high school. I was probably a disagreeable acne speckled metalhead at the time, listening to Iron Maiden. But I was living in this beautiful place and I was very fortunate to be going to the school. I was. I don't know. There was a. Clearly, from your narrative, there was chaos going on all around the city, but I was largely untouched by it. I'm sure I would have told you a different story at the time. Oh, life is miserable.

[01:15:39] Meg: I mean, it wasn't boring. Our neighborhood was not boring.

[01:15:42] Alex: No. Well, I gotta say, the funny thing about it is, like, I really, you know, I moved downtown in the. I would say mid-90s. And I really missed Central park because it was just this. This amazing backyard that we all. But obviously it's true to your story. It's like there's a lot of bad shit that was going on right there and we all like, oh, but it's so nice and green and whatever.

[01:16:07] Meg: But it's funny, it wasn't really green in 1980.

[01:16:10] Alex: No, it really wasn't. Actually.

[01:16:11] Meg: It was very brown.

[01:16:13] Alex: Brown and dirty. But it's. You know, I think there's probably fodder for a different discussion. But like, I used to be really irresponsible about how I regarded the park. And that extended into the 90s. I remember when I. In the 90s, which is not suitable topic for this. I played on my. The magazine I worked for. I played on their softball team. And we would go after each game into a certain bar on the Upper west side. And I would then walk home through the park after no fewer than three or four beers to my home in Yorkville through the dark.

[01:16:49] Meg: Oh.

[01:16:50] Alex: Although there is a caveat, and that is I was carrying a baseball bat, so that may have been a deterrent from any would be assailant.