[00:20] Meg: Welcome to Desperately Seeking the 80s: New York edition. I am Meg.

[00:25] Jessica: And I'm Jessica. And Meg and I have been friends since 1982. We got through middle school and high school together here in New York City, where we still live.

[00:35] Meg: Where we are still very good friends. And this is a podcast in which Jessica and I revisit the New York City of our youth.

[00:43] Jessica: I handle pop culture.

[00:45] Meg: And my specialty is “ripped from the headlines.” And I have a good one for you today, Jessica. One that I don't think you've heard of. Are you ready?

[00:55] Jessica: Probably not. All right, Meg, I'm bracing myself. What do you have for us today?

[01:03] Meg: Well, first, I'm going to ask you a question. I wonder if, like me, you like to stay in hotels in the city for fun?

[01:12] Jessica: Why, yes, I do.

[01:13] Meg: What is your favorite hotel?

[01:15] Jessica: The Mark.

[01:15] Meg: Oh, my gosh. You've actually stayed there?

[01:18] Jessica: Yed, Yes.

[01:19] Meg: Jessica, I'm so jealous.

[01:20] Jessica: Yes, the night after my first wedding.

[01:27] Meg: We'll learn a little bit more about you and me.

[01:32] Jessica: Yes, I'm not ashamed of multiple marriages.

[01:35] Meg: No, of course not. Nor should you be.

[01:36] Jessica: Stigmas be gone. So, yeah. So that was 1996.

[01:42] Meg: My goodness.

[01:43] Jessica: That was when I first began staying at The Mark.

[01:45] Meg: The Mark, a gorgeous hotel. I, the closest I have come to staying at the Mark is having a cocktail.

[01:51] Jessica: They have a fantastic bar.

[01:53] Meg: Fantastic. And I love hotel bars. Yes. Anyway, hotels in New York City that are not nearly as beautiful as the Mark are all over this story.

[02:07] Jessica: Oh, boy. Really bad things that happen in seedy New York hotels.

[02:13] Meg: This possibly is the worst.

[02:16] Jessica: Oh, I can't wait.

[02:18] Meg: My sources are Wikipedia, a New York Times 1979 article, Crime Scene the Times Square Killer, which is a documentary on Netflix. Highly recommended. Ephemeral New York, which is a website. Again, it's awesome. And the New York Post.

[02:37] Jessica: Our favorite.

[02:39] Meg: On December 2, 1979, firemen responded to reports of a fire on the fourth floor of the Travel Inn on 515 West 42nd street at 10th Avenue, just west of Times Square. Can you picture it?

[02:55] Jessica: Yes, sadly.

[02:56] Meg: Yeah. Yeah, it's bleak. When the firemen broke into Room 417, they discovered the smoldering bodies of two women. When the smoke cleared, they realized that the heads and hands of these women had been removed before they had been set on fire. The look on your face, Jessica, I told you, this is a bleak one. There were no surveillance cameras then. And when people checked into hotels, they didn't even need to show ID. They just signed a log book with any name they decided to come up with. And the man who had checked into room 17, was secretive. Not surprising. He registered under a fake name and address, had no conversations with the staff, and in almost four days at the hotel, he was rarely seen keeping a Do Not Disturb sign on his room. There was no way to identify the bodies. DNA technology was still seven years off. The only evidence left in the room was the clothing of the women, folded neatly and placed in the tub. A pair of black high heeled Philippe Marco shoes that were sold exclusively at Bamberger's department stores in New Jersey, a pair of Bonjour jeans, size seven/eight, a red sweater, a black fur jacket and a pair of white leotards. A witness who saw the suspect when he registered at the Travel Inn helped make a composite sketch of a 35 year old white man with brown hair, five foot ten inches, weighing 170 lbs, which, incidentally, is a description of what my father looked like in 1979, which is a little unsettling.

[04:38] Jessica: Did you have that thought at the time?

[04:40] Meg: Absolutely had that thought when I was researching this. Not that he was a suspect in this crime, because I can tell you they caught the guy and it wasn't my father, but I was just like, five foot ten, weighing 170 ibs, brown hair. I mean, this is just like, that was my dad.

[04:58] Jessica: And I'm sure many, many men in the city at the time.

[05:01] Meg: Yes, exactly this composite sketch, and this description did not help catch him.

[05:07] Jessica: Okay.

[05:07] Meg: The police questioned hundreds of sex workers, hoping they would tell them about suspicious characters they'd come across. But in Times Square in 1979, just about everybody was a suspicious character. It was the porn capital of the world. There were hustlers, three card monte guys, businessmen lined up at the peep shows, and terrified tourists rushing from the Milford Plaza to see a matinee of Oklahoma. I should have looked up how much it cost to stay at the Milford Plaza.

[05:39] Jessica: I'm just remembering the jingle for the Milford Plaza. It was to come on along and listen to the lullaby of Broadway. But it was come on and stay, “something” at the Milford Plaza, and in the center of it all is the Milford plaza. That was it. Oh, God. It was just anyway, go ahead, please. Don't let me digress.

[06:03] Meg: No, go ahead. I mean, we started with hotels.

[06:06] Jessica: Go, go.

[06:07] Meg: It was the Times Square was the perfect place for bad guys to thrive and a very scary place and time to be a sex worker. There was a constant physical threat from pimps and John's and zero protection from police. The market for graphic and violent pornography kept increasing, and the men who paid for sex often believed they'd bought the sex workers and had the right to do whatever they wanted to them. The concept the sex worker could be raped didn't exist in 1979. In fact, it was legal to rape your wife in New York State until 1984. The police got nowhere questioning the sex workers about the unidentified bodies. The women were too scared to talk to the police, A. because their pimps would punish them, and B. because at that time, only sex workers were arrested for prostitution. Not the johns, rarely the pimps. So merely admitting their profession put them in jeopardy. After two weeks of frustration, one police officer had the idea of borrowing mannequins from Gimbals and dressing them in the clothes that had been left in the bathtub. They called a press conference and circulated photos of the mannequins in the fur jacket and white leotard and bonjour jeans. It was a brilliant move because people could now envision these women. And soon enough, a woman named Rose came forward, saying she recognized one of the outfits as the one her roommate wore when she left the house.

[07:45] Jessica: Oh, I just got chills.

[07:48] Meg: Yeah, I mean, on our website, I'm going to have a picture of the mannequins because it's a creepy photo. I got to say

[07:58] Jessica: Mannequins are rarely a warm and fuzzy experience.

[08:02] Meg: But isn't that so smart?

[08:03] Jessica: Yeah, it's brilliant.

[08:04] Meg: Dida Guddarzi was positively identified. Dita was born in Iran, came to the US. When she was eight and was raised in Brooklyn. She didn't finish high school and had run away from home a couple of times, finally landing in Trenton, New Jersey. She would take the train into New York City to work as a high price escort out of the bars and sex clubs. The other woman from the hotel has never been identified.

[08:30] Jessica: Well, I'm curious. Can I ask you a question? So both of their outfits were in the tub?

[08:35] Meg: Yeah.

[08:35] Jessica: So why was only Dita's outfit?

[08:39] Meg: No, they did both. There are two mannequins. I just didn't list all of the, but they had enough clothes to clothe two mannequins, and there were two piles of clothes in the tub.

[08:49] Jessica: So it's clear which leotard went with which fur jacket.

[08:53] Meg: Yeah, actually, isn't that interesting? I mean, a little weird, right?

[08:57] Jessica: Well, fetishistic I'd say.

[09:01] Meg: Yes, because they were like, oh, well, he removed the heads in the hands to keep us from identifying them. But why did he fold the clothes neatly and put them in the tub? Because that's going to help identify them. So it was just mixed messaging, right, by this guy.

[09:14] Jessica: Who was a lunatic. So yeah.

[09:17] Meg: So then on May 15, 1985, 5 months after the torso fire in Times Square, another woman's body was found at the Hotel Seville on East 29th street and Madison Avenue after a fire had been set there. The Hotel Seville is now the James Hotel. Can you picture it?

[09:43] Jessica: Actually, I know exactly which hotel that is.

[09:46] Meg: And rooms go for, nowadays, rooms go for $250 a night at the James Hotel. The victim was Jean Rayner, a 25 year old mother working in the sex trade to finance a child custody battle. The killer had beaten, tortured, raped, and strangled Jean. Then he removed her breasts and placed them on the headboard. Yeah, it's perverse. The police immediately believed that this murder was committed by the same man who committed the torso murders. And they believed the killer's post mortem mutilation was not to avoid detection, but was his signature. In other words, he got off on it. He was clearly targeting sex workers in the area of 8th Avenue between 42nd and 50th street, known as I'm curious to know if you've ever heard of this. The Minnesota Strip.

[10:46] Jessica: Oh, no.

[10:47] Meg: It was called the Minnesota Strip for all the teenage runaways from Middle America who ended up there.

[10:54] Jessica: Oh, God. That is grizzly.

[10:55] Meg: Yeah, it's really sad.

[10:57] Jessica: That is very sad.

[10:59] Meg: A week later, on May 22, 1980, Richard Cottingham, we now have a name, picked up 19-year-old Leslie Ann O'Dell, who was soliciting on the corner of Lexington Avenue and 25th street, around the corner from me. She agreed to have sex with him for $100. Around dawn, they checked into the Hasbrouck Heights Quality Inn in New Jersey, where he began torturing her. She later testified, yes, she survived that, he said, “You have to take it. The other girls did. You have to take it, too. You're a whore and you have to be punished.” Odell's muffled cries of pain became so loud that the motel staff called police. Just a few days earlier, the dead handcuffed naked body of Valerie Street had been found at the same motel. And three years previously, the body of x-ray technician Maryanne Carr, who was 26, was also found brutally beaten and handcuffed near the Hasbrouck Heights Quality Inn. So the staff was on alert. They rushed to the room, demanding that Cottingham open the door. When he was eventually arrested, he had handcuffs, a leather gag, two slave collars, a switchblade, replica pistols and a stockpile of prescription pills. Richard Cottingham was 33 and lived in New Jersey with his wife and three kids. He commuted to Manhattan, where he worked as a computer programmer for Blue Cross Blue Shield, right off Times Square. After matching his fingerprints, comparing handwriting samples to his signature on the travel in registry, and finding a trophy room in his home of items belonging to the dead women. Violent pornography and adhesive tape. The police knew they had their man. Turns out Cottingham had been bragging for years to his coworkers about drugging and beating up sex workers, but no one had taken him seriously. Cottingham insisted he was innocent, and even though there was a mountain of evidence against him, he insisted on going to trial. A number of victims who had survived his attacks testified against him. But Cunningham claimed he was being framed by the police and that all the sex workers were lying and that their torture was consensual. Fortunately, he was found guilty of five murders and sentenced to 200 years. He maintained his innocence until 2009, when he started talking. He finally confessed to Nadia Fazani, a female journalist who specializes in interviewing serial killers and provided many details, including how he disposed of the heads and hands. And then he started confessing to many more murders. Cottingham is still alive. He is at the South Woods State Prison in Bridgeton, New Jersey, and has officially killed eleven people, but he claims to have committed between 85 and 100 murders. He claims he was killing women every other week for 13 years.

[14:31] Jessica: Yeah. I can't even let it just sit heavily in the room and depress all of us. I think even Alfie, my dog, is just like, having a little depression right now.

[14:46] Meg: But when people talk about, we can close it out with this, like when people talk about, oh, the good old days when Times Square was seedy and you know oh, yeah, no.

[14:57] Jessica: The fantasy that was.

[15:00] Meg: Kind of cool. No. It was scary as hell. And it was filled with misogyny. And I do not consider that time and place charming.

[15:14] Jessica: No. And your point about the Minnesota strip

[15:21] Meg: oh, my God. Doesn’t that break your heart?

[15:23] Jessica: Yeah. It was like an industry to go to Penn Station and Port Authority. And get girls. In fact, a dear friend of mine from summer camp, this is in the 80s, I guess this must have been like 1984 or so. She came to visit me from New Jersey in New York and took a bus into Port Authority.

[15:48] Meg: I’m already scared.

[15:50] Jessica: Yeah. And some dude tried to like, oh, let me help you with your bag. Let me do this, let me do that. And she was the least savvy person, but knew, get the fuck away from me, and just bolted out of there as quickly as possible. And she did not look like she had been on a bus for five days and hadn't eaten. Like she was a cute little, well put together, blonde from Montclair, New Jersey, or Mountainside, New Jersey. Excuse me. And so, yeah, like, it was just, it was like they would stand there with a net and just wait for them to swim into the net.

[16:36] Meg: Did I ever tell you that I was once mistaken as a prostitute?

[16:42] Jessica: I'm not surprised.

[16:43] Meg: Oh why, thank you Jessica.

[16:45] Jessica: No, what happened?

[16:46] Meg: But the whole thing just made me so depressed. I worked at a coffee place. It was called New World Coffee. It's kind of like Starbucks. And I was, I opened, so I had to be there at 5:45 in the morning. But my assistant manager had the keys, and he was always late. So there I was standing in front of New World Coffee, and this is in midtown, and I was wearing this suede jacket that I thought was really cute. Sure, it had a couple of rips, but I thought that was kind of cool. Whatever. And I'm sitting there waiting, 5:45 in the morning, waiting for the assistant manager to come and this middle aged man. And I was probably like, I'm going to guess like 25, right? This middle aged man came up to me and he said, “Hi.” And I said, “Hi.” And he said, “Can I buy you breakfast?” I'm like, “No thank you. I'm fine.” He's like, “My hotel is right around the corner. You look hungry.” And then I went *(gasps)* and he realized that he had made a horrible mistake and he was like, “Oh, my God, Oh, my God, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.” I’m like, go away, leave me alone. I hate my assistant manager!

[18:00] Jessica: Did you cry?

[18:01] Meg: No, I didn't cry, but it just depressed me so much. I mean, imagine if I had been, you know, just some hungry girl at dawn.

[18:16] Jessica: The truly terrifying thing about it and depressing thing is the entitlement on the part of this person and all people who approach sex workers in the street, the entitlement that It would be a good idea to solicit this person and that the assumption would be that it's fine. Can you imagine going through life like, I'm just going to do whatever the fuck I want to in this exact moment, and the likelihood is it's perfectly fine and will go in my favor. What is that?

[19:00] Meg: Also, like I was saying in the story, the whole idea of, like, when you buy somebody, you own them and you can do whatever you want.

[19:10] Jessica: Well, I have a feeling that there's going to be a lot more about Times Square and the seriously bad things that went down there.

[19:17] Meg: Yes, I'll let you know when the really cool book shows up that I ordered.

[19:20] Jessica: Very good. Thank you, Meg.

[19:23] Meg: You're welcome Jessica. What do you have for me today Jessica? I cannot wait.

[19:30] Jessica: Well, it's funny that you mentioned the hookers on 11th Avenue.

[19:36] Meg: Yes.

[19:39] Jessica: So that's where we're going to begin.

[19:42] Meg: Okay.

[19:42] Jessica: Okay. When I went out of the city with my parents, we would go because I lived way on the East Side, we would get on the FDR for the most part and go to the Harlem River Drive and that's how we'd get out of the city. And my mom would be very aggressive about shrieking, lock the doors, roll up the windows. The minute that we were getting close to the Bowery. So it was a different demographic. The Bowery was squeegee men who demanded money very aggressively as they, in air quotes, cleaned the windshield with a greasy, dirty rag and don't open the window, and hopeless alcoholics who were just decaying in the street. Just really sad and creepy. My experience with the 11th Avenue sex workers started in, let's see well, I think it started in 1987.

[21:02] Meg: Okay.

[21:03] Jessica: So in 1987, I started going clubbing for the first time.

[21:11] Meg: Are you going to talk about the tunnel.

[21:14] Jessica: How dare you?

[21:15] Meg: I'm so sorry.

[21:16] Jessica: Just pull it back in there sister.

[21:18] Meg: Be patient.

[21:24] Jessica: And a lot of my club experience was connected. I was in the care of and again, loosely care of, one of my very best friends, who was a baby drag queen at the time.

[21:45] Meg: Really?

[21:46] Jessica: Yes.

[21:48] Meg: Do I know this person?

[21:49] Jessica: Very well. And so we would go and baby drag queen lived in Chelsea.

[21:59] Meg: Okay.

[22:00] Jessica: With family. And we would meet there and do the whole dressing up and all of that fun stuff, which is always better than actually going out and then we would take a taxi up the West Side Highway and frequently on 11th Avenue, going to the tunnel or red zone or Area.

[22:31] Meg: Okay.

[22:32] Jessica: Okay? And along the way, I saw the last gasps of the gay sex scene at the piers and the hustlers on 11th Avenue. And we called them this then. I'm not advocating this term now. This is from a long time ago, the tranny hookers who were walking up and down under the overpass of 11th Avenue. And they were the scariest ones, probably because they were most targeted. But that's the original, “I'm gonna cut a bitch.” They were very scary. And if memory serves, and I think there was even like something like this on Sex in the City in the first iteration of that show. But I was with friends, this is later, as a college friend got into a cab that one of these prostitutes wanted to get into, and she just reached in and threw him out of the cab and got in. It was not delicate. So this is to say, this was my entry into nightclub world.

[24:06] Meg: And where was that? Wasn't in meat packing. I didn't go to Area.

[24:10] Jessica: You know what? Amazingly, I have a phone in my hand, and I can tell you where Area was. Area, oh rats. Hold on a second. I think that it was higher up.

[24:32] Meg: Okay, you don't have to look at that. It's fine.

[24:34] Jessica: No. Now I have to. But I love that when I type in Area into Google, it immediately goes to aliens. Area 51, which is not wrong. It was 157 Hudson Street. So it was closer to meat packing.

[24:51] Meg: It was meat packing adjacent.

[24:54] Jessica: It operated from 1983 to 1987. Anyway, nightclubs in New York, what to say. So, rather than giving you a history, I figured that I would just talk about my experiences and how weird looking back on it now, how weird it is. Not unlike the teenage drinking that I've talked about on our podcast, but how young everyone was at these really out there clubs where sex was happening on the dance floor. Drugs were happening on the dance floor. All kinds of insanity.

[25:41] Meg: Dark and sticky.

[25:43] Jessica: Very sticky. There was a lot of stickiness. Now, my experience with nightclubs actually began in, I don't know, like, 78, because I don't know if people know this, but Studio 54, if you couldn't get into studio 54, there was a second tier Studio 54 type place called Xenon.

[26:12] Meg: Oh, my gosh.

[26:13] Jessica: And Xenon.

[26:14] Meg: That's a flash.

[26:16] Jessica: Yes. Xenon was owned by a guy whose children went to my grammar school.

[26:29] Meg: Okay.

[26:30] Jessica: And I believe that Xenon is now the Stephen Sondheim theater.

[26:37] Meg: Fascinating.

[26:38] Jessica: Yes.

[26:41] Meg: But what were you doing there in the late 70s.

[26:43] Jessica: So I'm going to explain it to you. Howard Stein was one of the founders. So his two children went to my school, and they would have their birthday parties at xenon.

[26:56] Meg: Oh my gosh.

[26:57] Jessica: And I forgot the boy's name. The girl's name was Jennifer, but she changed her name still while a kid, she insisted on being called Galaxy.

[27:09] Meg: Good for her.

[27:10] Jessica: So Galaxy Stein, and I think Michael was her brother would have their parties there, but here's how ridiculous New York is, at the time, I remember that we were aware of the fact that it wasn't studio.

[27:30] Meg: Oh my God, you were little snob.

[27:36] Jessica: No, we weren't snobs. It doesn't matter. I was eight. I don't think my opinion really counted for much. And we also would have birthdays at the Roxy, which was a roller rink during the day. And it was the place where many people had their first coed holding hands, skate, and then they did reverse skate, then couples only, then girls. So it was quite a thing. And then at night, it turned into a raging gay disco of poppers on the dance floor and God knows what. So it was a very weird place, but it created this awareness at a very young age that this is what nightlife is, this is where it takes place, that sort of thing. And then skip ahead. This was my last sort of innocent experience with nightclubs. So there was a girl in our class at Nightingale who had a sweet 16, which was not something that many people did in our scene, or did I just not get invited to them? Were there a lot of sweet 16?

[29:04] Meg: I don't know. Am I thinking of the one that were we both at the same one? Am I thinking of the same one?

[29:12] Jessica: Well, I'll tell you where it took place. It took place at a disco called Private Eyes.

[29:19] Meg: I don't think I was there. Tell me who it is.

[29:23] Jessica: I can't say the name.

[29:25] Meg: Okay, well, tell the story and maybe I’l know.

[29:26] Jessica: Okay, I'm going to mouth it to you.

[29:28] Meg: Mouth it to me. Oh, yes, I was there.

[29:31] Jessica: Okay, you were there.

[29:36] Meg: Is that where we were?

[29:37] Jessica: Yes. And yet again, what was sort of fascinating about it was that I remember having an awareness yet again, no, it wasn't a strip joint, it was a gay club.

[29:51] Meg: Okay.

[29:52] Jessica: And so much of New York Nightlife was gay. The best party was going to be wherever it was gay. I mean, Studio 54, highly gay. So we, we had, we went to that sweet 16. And I remember she was the only girl who had one. And at the time, I remember my parents said to me, do you want a Bat mitzvah? When I was like twelve, do you want a Bat mitzvah or do you want a Sweet 16? And the idea of going to more school was so psychotic to me that I was like, fuck Hebrew school, I'm not doing that. I’ll have a sweet 16. And by the time, sweet 16 era rolled around, so mid 80s, it was so uncool. Like, we were listening to Joy Division and wearing oversized men's overcoats and spiked hair and all of that stuff. So I was like, I wouldn't be caught dead having a sweet 16, much, I'm sure, to my parents delight. So we went to the sweet 16, and I remember that there were girls doing coke in the bathroom. You know, the ones who got injected from our class, they were told that it would be a better idea to try boarding school.

[31:18] Meg: Okay, got it.

[31:22] Jessica: And that was, I think, the first time that I understood, “Oh, drugs and nightclubs.” Okay. So going back for a second, the history of nightclubs in New York City obviously is vast, absolutely beyond vast. So the era of nightclubs that we experienced really started in the 70s and it was really the disco's, and in Manhattan, it was really gay disco's. And the godfather of all of these was called the Paradise Garage. And it was really an unlicensed party that these guys would throw at a garage. And amazingly, I was in Hudson, New York, not Hudson. What am I saying to you? I think I was in Coleraine, Massachusetts.

[32:20] Meg: Okay.

[32:20] Jessica: And I was introduced to these very elderly couple, these two gentlemen. And one had been a graphic designer, and the other one, I can't remember what he did in their heyday. And it turns out he had designed the logo for Paradise Garage. And he told me all about how it was post-stonewall, obviously, but there wasn't really a place to dance and a place to just be completely under the radar and no one bothering them. And that was that. And it became the template for the Roxy and Area and Red Zone and the Tunnel and the Underground.

[33:08] Meg: Limelight.

[33:09] Jessica: No, not the highlight.

[33:11] Meg: No, I said Limelight.

[33:12] Jessica: Oh, Limelight. Yes.

[33:13] Meg: Palladium.

[33:14] Jessica: Palladium. Yes. All of those. Those clubs that we just named. Also, back to my point about how the gay scene informed New York City nightlife in the 70s and then through the 80s so very much, the drag scene really came out of there. And it makes me giggle now that I see, like, that RuPaul is a family fun. And I recall being with my baby drag queen friend, and RuPaul was out on the dance floor doing everything very, very naughty, everything really not family friendly, like with snatch a bitch's wig and just do all the drugs and then do the equivalent of blow the DJ. I don't want to besmirch Ru. I'm not sure exactly what she did, but still. And it was also the heyday of unbelievably creative drag queens who were not just trying to be the prettiest women. And I remember just fantastic out-there characters with the names. Like, HEDA lettuce you remember HEDA, and there was Lady Bunny and Lipsynca and all of those people, and they were really kind of amazing. And if you were in the nightclub scene, in Manhattan. There was no way for you not to be influenced by this. Very louche, but very open. Like anything could happen. And that wasn't a bad thing. And it was very creative kind of place kind of scene anyway. So that is really an introduction. Because as I've said a couple of times already, how can you say, well, I'm going to talk about nightclubs or movies and then say, okay, that's been covered?

[35:35] Meg: I think that with all these topics that we're talking about, they're going to keep coming up. This is just like the introduction is a perfect way of saying it. And I just now thought of a true crime story that I could tell. I'm pretty sure happened in the 80s rather than the 90s that involved one of those clubs.

[35:55] Jessica: One of those clubs. And there were so many of them. And the other thing about clubbing at the time and that, I think, is one of the worst things that has happened to New York. And I blame Giuliani. I think it was Giuliani who made New York into the land of no dancing. Footloose.

[36:18] Meg: Right. That I was going to say that's like a law now that you can't.

[36:22] Jessica: You need to have a cabaret license.

[36:24] Meg: Cabaret license in order to dance. It's so weird.

[36:27] Jessica: The idea that you would go out at night and not go dancing was insane.

[36:33] Meg: That it's hard to find a place to go dancing now is strange.

[36:37] Jessica: Correct. And we would go out dancing until we were so hot and sweaty. Just taking clothes off, not to be provocative or intentionally provocative.

[36:48] Meg: And you throw your coats in the mitter and then you dance around the pile of coats.

[36:53] Jessica: Yes. And your bag, because you didn't want to. And your sweater and then

[36:57] Meg: You didn't want to check anything.

[36:59] Jessica: Exactly. Yes. Because if you checked anything at these places, nine times out of out of ten, the coat check girls or boys would not only go through your pockets, but take your coat.

[37:12] Meg: I don't like long lines, but yeah. Jessica, we need to go dancing.

[37:16] Jessica: Well, I think we'd have to go to Williamsburg to do that. I think that there are like a few little, you know, I think they're like little seedlings, little sprouts that might bring dancing back to New York. But it was the most fun and in the late 90s, one of the last places that I went to to just go dancing. I loved it. And it still exists. Did you ever go to Niagara on 7th and I think it's A or B.

[37:54] Meg: I do not think so.

[37:56] Jessica: Here's an interesting little tidbit. What I loved about going to Niagara was that first off, the music was amazing. The dance floor was the size of this little office that we're doing this podcast in. It was small, but the rule was if you were a good dancer, it didn't matter if you're black, white, Hispanic, Asian, whatever, boy, girl in between. If you were a good dancer, everyone wanted to dance with you. And it was an absolute party. It was so much fun. Fueled by drugs. Yes. But so inclusive and so much fun. And you could go and dance for hours and hours and hours. It was absolutely delightful. So if any of that if that's part of our legacy, that we have at least one listener who says, I want to be an impresario and bring this back, I say, yes, we've done a good job. But anyway, so that's the introduction to: we are going to talk about nightclubs. [39:06] Meg: Awesome.

[39:07] Jessica: Okay.

[39:08] Meg: Well, thank you very much, Jessica.

[39:09] Jessica: Okay, well, that is another episode of Desperately Seeking the 80s New York City edition, in the can! This is fun. So we're just getting our bearings, and I think it's going well. How do you feel?

[39:25] Meg: I'm excited.

[39:26] Jessica: Very good.

[39:27] Meg: I know what my next story is going to be, too.

[39:30] Jessica: As do I. I think we're going to have a very special episode. Yes.

[39:37] Meg: No Spoilers.

[39:39] Jessica: No, but it's a very special episode.

[39:40] Meg: Okay. I think I know.

[39:42] Jessica: Okay. Well, thanks, Meg.

[39:43] Meg: Until next time.

[39:44] Jessica: Bye, bye.

[39:45] Meg: Bye.