[00:16] Meg: Welcome to Desperately Seeking the ‘80s. I’m Meg.

[00:20] Jessica: I am Jessica, and Meg and I have been friends since 1982. We survived middle school, and high school together here in New York City.

[00:29] Meg: Where we still live and where we are currently podcasting about New York City in the ‘80s. I handle ripped from the headlines.

[00:36] Jessica: And I handle Pop Culture.

[00:39] Meg: Before we get started, Jessica, I would like to read to you something from one of the BFFs of the podcast.

[00:47] Jessica: Goodie.

[00:47] Meg: Ms. Queenie, in response to the Marty Tankleff story, wrote in, ah, I went to a neighboring school and partied with him as a teen. This was the most heartbreaking story. I'm really happy Marty found a calling and was able to reclaim the pieces of his life that were robbed of him. The Suffolk County Police were assholes. This is from a local. And Strathmore Bagels were the best. That's the bagel shop that Jerry Steuerman had. And even though Steuerman is the guilty one, he treated his employees right. Isn't that interesting? He was a good boss.

[01:28] Jessica: Weird.

[01:29] Meg: And then I wrote back like, tell me more. And she said he would hang around my friend Alison and her friends at Earl Vandermullen High School in Port Jefferson/Belle Terre. Allison and I were close, but were at a neighboring high school on the other side of the tracks in Port Jeff station. I recall most kids thinking he was annoying. We spoke a few times. He was 17. Everyone is sort of a dork or a dick back then. But I remember that day so vividly because it was my first day of school and I got home and ran over to Alison's friend's house to talk about it. This all coming on the heels of the Tawana Brawley case, the Central Park Five, preppy murder. So to have such a huge story all the way out on the island was mind blowing. He must have been so scared. If you read about his older sister, she was a garbage person.

[02:25] Jessica: I like this whole concept of dork versus dick.

[02:28] Meg: I know that could be like a.

[02:30] Jessica: New game we play. Like, remember the MTV game shows back in the day? Like Dead or Canadian?

[02:36] Meg: I didn't watch these, but I think.

[02:38] Jessica: It was remote control. Adam Corolla is one of the hosts, but what was his name? And Chris Hardwick of Thrillist fame did that. But we could sort of incorporate that into our judgment of the people we cover. Well, it's nice to know that Marty had a second chance.

[03:02] Meg: Yeah. And of course, like she said, everyone that age is kind of a ridiculous human being.

[03:07] Jessica: If you are not absurd when you're 17, then you’re not 17. All right, let's hit it.

[03:16] Meg: So isn't that nice that we're getting people writing in and giving us updates on things? I love it.

[03:21] Jessica: It's so great to know that sort of a nice little community is springing up around our 80s reminiscing. I love it.

[03:31] Meg: And that they have so much to add too.

[03:33] Jessica: It rounds out the stories. Love it.

[03:37] Meg: All right, you're ready for your engagement question?

[03:39] Jessica: Yes.

[03:40] Meg: Did you read magazines?

[03:41] Jessica: Yes.

[03:42] Meg: What magazines did you read in high school or grade school? Whatever.

[03:46] Jessica: Okay. Starting from when I was really little, Cricket Literary Magazine for Children.

[03:52] Meg: Lovely memory.

[03:53] Jessica: Yes. National Geographic. Mad Magazine.

[03:59] Meg: Oh, my God. We’ve got to post a picture of Mad Magazine.

[04:02] Jessica: Cracked Magazine.

[04:04] Meg: My brother and I were obsessed with Mad Magazine.

[04:06] Jessica: Mad magazine was it. But if you didn't have Mad around in the Orthodontist's office, Cracked would do. And although these are not magazines, they're comics. As another extension of the orthodontia offerings, there was every permutation of Archie comics. Yes. And Highlights was at the pediatricians office.

[04:28] Meg: Okay.

[04:29] Jessica: But things that came to my house, and obviously we also bought stuff, so John and I would buy magazines and all that stuff together. And then when I got older, 17 Magazine. And then I think I read the stuff that was coming in for my parents, like Time and that sort of thing. But certainly 17 Magazine. And by the time you're 17, you don't read that anymore?

[04:58] Meg: No, I had a whole stack.

[04:59] Jessica: Absolutely.

[05:01] Meg: So today's sources are a Daily News article written by Jimmy Breslin in Breslin and Hamill.

[05:10] Jessica: Oh, yeah.

[05:11] Meg: Did you see it? It's a great documentary on HBO.

[05:15] Jessica: I thought you were just saying those two guys.

[05:17] Meg: Those two guys.

[05:18] Jessica: Oh, there's a documentary.

[05:20] Meg: It is very good. It's on HBO. And then articles from the New York Times from 1982 and 1985.

[05:27] Jessica: Okay.

[05:28] Meg: On July 27, a police officer in the 19th Precinct, which is where? That is the Upper East Side. It is 96th street to 59th street and it is Fifth Avenue to the East River. So it is basically the precinct that we grew up in and went to school. It is our precinct. Okay. And where we are sitting right now yes.

[05:56] Jessica: Actually, right now we're sitting in the 23rd Precinct.

[05:58] Meg: Oh, right. We're one block north of the 19th.

[06:02] Jessica: Nonetheless. Go 19.

[06:04] Meg: Go 19. So this police officer was patrolling during his midnight to 8:00 a.m. shift. Must have been a little lonely. Makes sense. He stopped off at a newsstand and picked up a copy of Beaver magazine.

[06:19] Jessica: Was that about the Brearley School?

[06:21] Meg: It was not at all about the Brearley School

[06:25] Jessica: The Brearley School, whose mascot famously and unfortunately, was the Beaver.

[06:31] Meg: Unfortunate because it's an all girl school. Anyway, Beaver magazine was subtitled the Wildlife magazine.

[06:41] Jessica: Meaning, you know, like, unkempt.

[06:44] Meg: Yeah.

[06:45] Jessica: I'm just saying what the aesthetic is for those who may not be familiar.

[06:50] Meg: The covers that I found published in the 80s often featured the models sucking on something long. That's subtle. Or licking an ice cream cone. It's really remarkable how many ways they found to get someone to lick or suck something right on the cover. The articles, on the other hand, on these covers were, quote, doityourselfers do themselves in, what'll you be driving in 1981, and social insecurity, it may not be there when you need it. So there's a bit of a disconnect between the visuals and the articles that's.

[07:31] Jessica: Sort of like did you see the show on, I think it was HBO Max Minx? No, I highly recommend it.

[07:38] Meg: The photo quality and suggestiveness is more Hustler than Playboy, from what I saw.

[07:46] Jessica: Okay.

[07:47] Meg: In this particular July 1982 edition of Beaver, the feature article is, quote, angry, nervous, freaked out. It's the recession, accompanied by a full body profile of a naked blonde woman in gold platform heels bending over to touch her ankle for really no purpose that I could discern.

[08:11] Jessica: There was no strap?

[08:13] Meg: No. She's just sort of stroking the side of her ankle. It was completely without purpose.

[08:18] Jessica: I like that that's what you focus on. Go ahead.

[08:20] Meg: The cop patrolling in 1982 brought his copy of Beaver back to the precinct on 67th street between Second and Third, and was flipping past picks of women named Sheena, Jackie and Patty, Cory, Lisa, and on page 56, Nina. The pictures of Nina were particularly dirty, and the cop recognized Nina. She worked upstairs. She was a fellow police officer in the 19th Precinct, and her real name was Cibella Borges. The cop showed his sergeant the pics and the sergeant showed the lieutenant, and word quickly spread through the building. When Cibella heard the whispers and went to the lieutenant to find out what was going on, she found him displaying the five page spread to a whole group of cops. By the way, I found a copy of this particular edition of the magazine, but it cost $149, which is sadly not in our podcast budget.

[09:26] Jessica: Not yet.

[09:27] Meg: I know someday we will see the actual spread of Cibella. So her lieutenant says to Cibella, this is very serious. And she replied, quote, I posed for those pictures before I came on the force. I forgot all about them. And this was true. Back in 1980, Cibella was 22 and earned about $100 a week teaching typing at the police academy. And while she was employed by the police department, she was still a civilian. She met a photographer who offered her $150 to pose nude for him. His plan was to shop the photos around to adult magazines. Now, Cibella had recently been told she couldn't bear children because of an operation she had to remove a cyst. And she thought to herself, what's the difference? I can't have any kids, so who's going to marry me? So she posed for the pictures in the photographer studio on the West Side, pocketed the cash, and didn't think anything more about it. In the months that followed, she went on to pass the patrolman's exam, attend the police academy, and was sworn in as a police officer in late 1981. Now, she was making $400 a week, more than anyone in her family had ever made. She was four foot, eleven inches and 95 pounds, the smallest officer in the department's history. And she was recruited to work undercover for the Public Morals Division. And she spoke Spanish, which was extremely useful considering the huge Puerto Rican population in New York and the fact that the police department was primarily Irish Catholic. Shortly after being hired, Cibela earned a meritorious service medal for assisting in the arrest of a gang of armed robbers.

[11:17] Jessica: Really?

[11:18] Meg: So she's doing really well on her new job. But then Beaver came out, and three days later she was suspended without pay and she was eventually fired. She was charged with, quote, conduct prejudicial to the good order and effectiveness of the police department. And the press ate this whole thing up. Some headlines from the rags, quote, Morals Squad Officer in Big Expose Herself. Naughty Nina makes a clean breast of things.

[11:49] Jessica: Oh, help me.

[11:51] Meg: Quote, NYPD brass seek the naked truth. I think you would have been more clever.

[12:01] Jessica: That's so sweet, too. But now, of course, I'm going to have to figure something out for the Insta.

[12:07] Meg: Jimmy Breslin, who wrote for the Daily News, had a different take. He went to Cibella's defense, visiting her apartment on Orchard Street and interviewing her mother, quoting her as saying, quote, would it be better if she appeared on the front page of a newspaper, shot dead, or on the last page of a nude magazine?

[12:26] Jessica: Nice one, mom.

[12:28] Meg: Yeah. Breslin decried the hypocrisy of the police for condemning Cibella, a Puerto Rican woman, while excusing and defending the illegal and scandalous behavior of the Irishman on the force. You may wonder where her union was during all of this instead of having her back. Bill Caruso, the longtime head of the Police Benevolent Association, spent $16,000 to take out an ad in the Daily News, Breslin's newspaper skewering Breslin, calling his column, quote, biased, irrational, irresponsible rantings. The most astounding thing about the column is that the Daily News printed it word for word without first smelling Breslin's breath. Rude. Why, I never. But in 1985, in a three to one decision, the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court in Manhattan said Police Commissioner Robert Maguire had no right to fire Cibella for something she did before she became a police officer, especially because she used a pseudonym, and the magazine made no mention of the police department. How are you in some way embarrassing the police department if nobody knows you're a police officer?

[13:45] Jessica: You're not. It's a way to get a woman out of the way.

[13:48] Meg: Yeah. In the dissent, Justice Theodore Cupferman said Borges should be kept off the force because the photos were, quote, kinky and hardcore, and the fact she posed for them proved she lacked the judgment necessary to do police work. But Cibella was reinstated to her job and the panel awarded her $80,000 in back pay.

[14:12] Jessica: Nice.

[14:13] Meg: I mean, she had been out of work for quite a while, but still, she got her back pay. Quote, I really don't have to explain myself to any of my fellow officers. They don't explain to me what they do on their off hours. As it turns out, at least some of her fellow patrolmen were sympathetic. It's not easy being a woman and a cop at the same time. You can't just be a cop. You're a lady cop. When have you ever read about a gentleman cop?

[14:43] Jessica: Who is that?

[14:44] Meg: One of the patrolmen.

[14:46] Jessica: A man or a woman?

[14:47] Meg: A man.

[14:47] Jessica: Nice.

[14:48] Meg: I know. And by the way, I looked her up, she did get married to an extremely hot guy in Arizona. I know. Following her Instagram now. Well done, Cibella. Yeah.

[15:06] Jessica: I love this. This is one of the rare stories of retribution, of right being victorious over.

[15:15] Meg: Yeah. It depressed me, too, though, a bit. I mean, I'm glad it ends happily, but the fact that there was such a double standard and I don't know.

[15:25] Jessica: I feel like if you get depressed acknowledging that there's a double standard, like, how are you going to get through the day, even now?

[15:31] Meg: Yeah. I guess it's just a strong reminder.

[15:34] Jessica: It is a strong reminder, but this story is a strong reminder that there are decent folk.

[15:40] Meg: Right.

[15:41] Jessica: That the support of those people. Turns things around.

[15:44] Meg: Without Jimmy Breslin's article, nobody would have ever known about this. There's no way she would have had enough wherewithal to sue. Thank God for Jimmy Breslin in this particular case. And I was really happy to discover his columns.

[16:01] Jessica: Had you never read them?

[16:03] Meg: I mean, I don't know if I had. I think I've heard… he's full equips. Right. And he was ubiquitous in the 80s. He did commercials for things. I mean, he was everywhere. And I feel like there could be a whole book with all of his clever sayings, but did I ever read an article written by him? I don't know if I have. I think this might have been my first.

[16:23] Jessica: I know I didn't read the Daily News or the Post when I was a kid.

[16:28] Meg: Yeah, he was just kind of a local character.

[16:32] Jessica: Yes, a local character. But isn't that what this podcast is about? Also? It's discovering stuff that we didn't know about when we were kids and being able to have a different point of view. And Breslin, definitely, he was a powerful voice.

[16:51] Meg: Absolutely.

[16:52] Jessica: One of the few voices of the media in New York City and had.

[16:56] Meg: A very strong point of view and often stood up for the little guy.

[17:00] Jessica: Yes.

[17:01] Meg: So, yeah, I might come up with another he might inspire me to do another story.

[17:06] Jessica: Right on.

[17:08] Meg: Well, he was a man of the streets.

[17:11] Jessica: Well, thank you, Meg. That was an unusually upbeat story, and I've been enjoying your stories lately, for whatever it's worth. You've been on a roll.

[17:25] Meg: So I need to apologize. I mispronounced her name.

[17:29] Jessica: Is it Borges?

[17:30] Meg: Yes, Cibella Borges. And I showed you a picture of her husband.

[17:39] Jessica: Okay, let's just talk for a second about Cibella's husband.

[17:43] Meg: Yeah.

[17:43] Jessica: First off, she is cute as a button.

[17:45] Meg: Oh my God.

[17:46] Jessica: Very pretty lady and petite, tiny little person, but like a powerhouse.

[17:50] Meg: There are all these pictures inside the gym and like, her husband.

[17:55] Jessica: Is a smoke show.

[17:57] Meg: Holy crap. He's a very handsome man.

[18:03] Jessica: Yes. So bravo, Cibella. Nicely done.

[18:07] Meg: Two thumbs up indeed. From us.

[18:09] Jessica: Yes.

[18:10] Meg: Like you care, but yeah, much respect.

[18:13] Jessica: I'd care if someone randomly was like, hey, your husband is a smokeshow. You did well, and you're not so bad yourself. Well, yay her and I'm ready to take us down a trip of another kind. Okay, you sort of blew my mind. What did I do relatively recently when you told me about one of our listeners, another BFF of the cast who you know personally?

[18:43] Meg: Yes.

[18:44] Jessica: Okay, tell me again what he said to you or how he reached out.

[18:48] Meg: Yeah. Well, he and I did plays together in high school. We went to different high schools and there was something called Interschool. All the schools would get together and put on shows.

[18:58] Jessica: All the single sex prep schools.

[19:01] Meg: Although he didn't go to a single sex school.

[19:03] Jessica: Which one did he go to?

[19:04] Meg: Dalton.

[19:04] Jessica: Oh, yeah, that's right.

[19:06] Meg: And one of the shows that we did was actually at Trinity. In any case, I run into him after all these years. We have so much to talk about. As it turns out, he's been listening to the podcast, which I found very flattering, and he told me something I did not know about him, which was that he went to Fleming school.

[19:29] Jessica: He went to my grammar school. Yes. So before I went to Nightingale, I went to the Fleming School. And so he knows that from the cast because you've discussed my weird, hippie, bilingual, Frenchie diplomatic school.

[19:41] Meg: Yeah, he told me some Fleming stories.

[19:43] Jessica: Yeah. So Fleming was not entirely a normal place. There were a couple of kids who were really precocious, and Fleming had this weird kind of bohemian vibe to it. I think it was in 7th grade or 8th grade, my class, the English teacher, Mr. Mckevich, any minute that he was not at school, he was in a punk band and he had one of these crazy haircuts and looked like he was strung out all the time and at one point threw a child across some desks. He was out, but it was not the most conventional.

[20:24] Meg: And just to back up just a little bit, you went to Fleming from kindergarten, nursery school, teeny teeny kid through what grade? 7th, 7th grade. And then you came to Nightingale.

[20:36] Jessica: There was a teacher, Mr. O'Leary, who really had it in for my brother.

[20:43] Meg: And a couple of wait, did John go there too?

[20:46] Jessica: Oh, yeah. Nursery through 8th grade. So in 8th grade, he and Mr. O'Leary, who kind of victimized him and the other smartest kids in the class because he was one of those guys who really wanted to, like, have the cult of Mr. O'Leary, as pathetic as that is. And John and his buddies Mary and Maggie and Guy and DJ, they were just like, this is bullshit. They could see through it. So he treated them very badly.

[21:15] Meg: Cult teachers don't like that.

[21:17] Jessica: No they do not like it, as we both know from some of our Nightingale experiences. My mother was like, you don't stand a chance if you're in 8th grade with Mr. O'Leary because he's going to have it in for you the way he did for your brother. So let's get you out of there.

[21:34] Meg: Oh, wow. So you were preemptively dispatched.

[21:41] Jessica: And that's why I was the only new girl in our class in 8th grade, because no one switches schools in 8th grade. Anyway, it was a very unusual place. I was talking about kids being precocious. The older sister, who was, I think, in my brother's class or maybe one year below. So she was like two years ahead of us. She was always all decked out in gauzy Indian hippie shit, and she looked.

[22:05] Meg: Really you didn't wear a uniform?

[22:06] Jessica: Oh, God, no. We had a dress code. This one girl, we're going to call her Ella, she just lived on a different plane of existence. She was so clearly a 30 year old in, like a 13 year old body that everyone was like, there's no stopping her. So she wore these gauzy outfits, and she's beautiful and had really long, thick, straight blonde hair. It was like Nico went to school with us, okay? And she would barefoot shuffle around the school and go into the teachers lounge to get coffee. And she's like, don't mind me. They're like, okay, you do you. I love it. She took her little sister, who must have been, I guess, like, ten, who was in my class, to Rocky Horror Picture Show. So this is like 1980s, 1979. She went to all the rock shows. The kids were some of them were brilliant and went onto these incredibly illustrious careers, and others, not so much.

[23:07] Meg: Okay?

[23:07] Jessica: Anyway, when your friend brought up Fleming and the weirdness that went down there, he spoke about these two people who to this day loom large in the memories and the terrified nightmares indeed, of the kids in our age group. And the thing is, when you're a kid and you have a bully, you're victimized by somebody, or you see someone who you know is like a bad egg, you think it's only you who sees it, or you think it's only you who's getting treated poorly or beaten up or whatever it is. The story that I'm about to tell you is a really good example of don't always be so sure because you never know what kind of impact the person who is terrorizing you has on other people and how long that lives in their memories. And in fact, these can be unifying experiences. So to your friend who brought this up, I say, and there's no shortage of people who will join us in our hopefully, I don't know, a zoom call about this. The reason I say that it's not just a story that's mine or the Fleming kids is because I thought there are a couple of things in this story that I just want to look up online and just see if anyone else has anything to say about this. And lo and behold, there was.

[24:46] Meg: Oh, my God. Jessica.

[24:47] Jessica: I know. I'm going to actually so I found a blog called Vasify, and it's by someone who is a contemporary of ours who is also an Upper East Sider and went to, I believe, Browning, or it could have been York Prep. But I'm going to just read a little bit about a little bit of what he's written, and then I'm going to break it down and bring it home.

[25:15] Meg: Okay?

[25:16] Jessica: And I have to say that this guy, if you really want to know about New York in this time period, from the prep school kids perspective, the Upper East Side perspective, this guy has it. He is great.

[25:29] Meg: What's it called again?

[25:30] Jessica: Blog is called Flaming Pablumvass. P-A-B-L-U-M.

[25:35] Meg: Okay.

[25:36] Jessica: But the URL is vassifer.blogs.com. Okay. And he's a really good writer. To be fair, finding me a weblog that doesn't wallow in this brand of innate narcissism is hard. While my memories of the Manhattan of my youth are still vivid and important to me, I realize their ultimate irrelevance in the grand scheme of things. Alex we beg to differ. I believe I was inspired to write it from walking on the very streets I'm detailing on an almost daily basis during my current commute to work memories. It's his. Madeleine. The Streets of New York. How Proustian. As such, it invariably has much more resonance for me than it might for the reader. When my wife and I walk around Manhattan, she's routinely amazed that I have an anecdote or reminiscence attached to virtually every other street corner.

[26:29] Meg: It's true.

[26:30] Jessica: New York is just like that for me. Please bear that in mind if you choose to continue reading. And yes, I did. And he talks about being a little kid. A lot of the stuff that we talked about, like how old you are when you get to walk around by yourself and how you didn't even need a note at one point as a tiny kid to go get your parents cigarettes from the corner store. It's just ridiculous. And he grew up on 92nd street.

[27:01] Meg: What?

[27:02] Jessica: Yes.

[27:02] Meg: That's where I grew up.

[27:03] Jessica: I know. And eventually moved to East 86th street between first and York, so four blocks from me.

[27:11] Meg: How interesting.

[27:14] Jessica: He talks about one of the things that we will talk about on this podcast, which was like, what did New York kids do for entertainment? And one of the big things that people may not know is we didn't have them all. But we did have video game arcades.

[27:29] Meg: Oh, yeah.

[27:30] Jessica: And one of the most popular places to find video games and play and hang out after school were pizza parlors.

[27:38] Meg: That's where I went with Cathy. Lexington between 92nd and 93rd. Oh, I wonder if she remembers what it was called. But we spent hours. Hours. That's why I'm so good at Centipede.

[27:52] Jessica: Yes, exactly.

[27:53] Meg: And she's very good at Donkey Kong.

[27:56] Jessica: Donkey Kong. I love that. Okay, so he talks about 86th and growing up – 86th street, like, you did not go above it.

[28:03] Meg: Right.

[28:04] Jessica: 86th street was where the movie theaters were and they were like places to play pool, which of course you did not dare go into, but of course you had to see it. There's like record stores and candy stores. There's just everything on 86th street. And he writes, there was 86th street itself. To a person of small years in the mid to late 70s and early 80s, east 86th street between, say, Second Avenue and Lexington was like the Vegas strip. This was home to a then tantalizing selection of fast food franchises, record stores and movie theaters. Those attractions are mostly all but a memory now. I think the movie theater remains from that era.

[28:44] Meg: No longer, by the way, Papaya King still there, about to be torn down, I know.

[28:50] Jessica: But at the time, East 86th street was the epicenter of fun for the Upper East Side. Regrettably, it was also the turf of the semi notorious 86th Street Gang, a fabled collective of self styled hoods with names like Gino, Sloco, and the Red Twins, a pair of red haired identical twin brothers who purportedly lorded over the area in a reign of relative terror. I had one or two encounters with them that, while ultimately incidental, still left enough of a lasting impression on me. But I just love the way this guy writes. So, Alex, wherever you are, we're going to plug you on our own social media just because this is so great. And he talks about his best buddy, who he calls Spike in this, and at one point he describes him as having all of the musculature of Kermit the Frog and no shoulders at all. So these are like real dork boys. They played Dungeons and Dragons. They were just little nerds.

[29:57] Meg: Yeah.

[29:58] Jessica: One wintery, Saturday afternoon, Spike and I were predictably at Nino's, perched firmly in front of our beloved Stargate machine, probably fresh from a rousing round of advanced Dungeons and Dragons, one of our other big passions. Nino's was routinely packed with lots of patrons coming and going back in that narrow arcade game area in the back with all of our available senses otherwise preoccupied with saving humanoids and incinerating mutants. In Stargate, Spike and I failed to notice a large group of toughlooking, bigger kids entering the pizzeria. In an instant, a phalanx of tall figures closed in around us. He then describes them.

[30:38] Meg: Okay.

[30:38] Jessica: They don't sound like people you'd want to tussle with, particularly if you have no shoulders.

[30:44] Meg: Oh, no, I'm scared already.

[30:45] Jessica: One of them says, Give me all your money. And they freeze. And Alex starts reaching for his pockets. But behind him he says I could hear Spike talking back to one of my tormentors. Despite his physical disadvantages, Spike believed in never going quietly. Bless him. It's okay. Just take out the whole roll. These are words that might be very mysterious.

[31:13] Meg: I was going to say, we have to-

[31:14] Jessica: But if you went to arcades, you went with a roll of quarters.

[31:19] Meg: You had to. Otherwise that was it.

[31:21] Jessica: There was no other.

[31:22] Meg: But if you were really good at playing the game then you could turn like four quarters into 2 hours easy. If you are not good at the game, you're going to be spending quite a bit of money. But yeah, a roll of quarters. So give him the whole roll.

[31:37] Jessica: The follow up from my victimizer assuming either that I had a roll of quarters or possibly even a fetchingly monogrammed bill fold. I had two crumpled up dollar bills. Give me everything or I'm a fuck you up boy, says one of these kids. Out of nowhere come two older boys from his prep school. And they say, hey, leave them alone. Dramatically silhouetted at the entrance to the arcade game came John T. And. Robert C.

[32:09] Meg: Oh, no.

[32:12] Jessica: Two upper classmen from our school. Conveniently, they were older, taller, bigger and tougher than us. The phalanx of tufts melted away. The older boys got their money back, gave it to the boys and said, don't worry about it. Those toughs were also, as he describes, the 86th Street Gang. Now that we've set the scene with someone who's not me, I'm going to take this back to where we began. It was not the 86th Street Gang. It was the 84th Street Gang. Why was it a thing? The Upper East Side in the late 70s. Early 80s. Which is during our childhood. It was a very mixed bag because on the Avenues. For the most part you had these very fancy buildings like Park Avenue.

[33:04] Meg: Fifth Avenue.

[33:05] Jessica: Madison. And on Lexington and to the river on the Avenues you had all of the newer, big giant buildings that were built in the white brick buildings. But the side streets were all of the original families from what was a very working class neighborhood. Yorkville and the Upper East Side was not fancy except for Park and a couple of other little bits and pieces. So you had kids who were mostly of Irish descent, some German, because it was a German neighborhood, right on 86th Street. Still evidenced by Schaller and Weber Butcher that's still hanging on on 86th and Second. But it was an uneasy pairing growing up, my brother and our friends and I, and we all lived on, like, First, York, East End. We were pretty consistently mugged by the 84th street gang. We thought at the time that this one person was, like, a big deal. It turns out he was like some person who they sort of let hang on. But he was notorious in our neighborhood known as Fat Ally. Really? And Fat Ally was enormous. And my brother and I and I know this doesn't make us sound very good, but we would go horseback riding on Sundays and come out in our little riding habits. And Fat Ally would always say to my brother, hey, are you a jockey? And John was like, sure, whatever. Okay.

[34:41] Meg: Poor John.

[34:42] Jessica: Later in the afternoon on Sundays, we would go out with our skateboards, which would promptly get taken from us. So the number of skateboards we went through was pretty high. And there are a couple of other kids we recognize, one particularly, who they all looked up to, whose name was Farrington. And my brother and I still laugh about being terrified. Like, if we saw Farrington today, we would pee in our pants.

[35:08] Meg: But you only saw these kids on the street. Did you know what school they went to?

[35:13] Jessica: There were lots of parochial schools. They were at these very Catholic hardcore schools where they were probably getting the shit beaten out of them. But we did recognize two kids we knew two kids who were in the 84th street gang, and they never did us any harm, but they let their friends do it. Okay, now let's go back to Fleming for a second. There were brothers who attended Fleming. I'm not going to use their last name, but their names were Adam and Neil. And you never said one or the other. It was always Adam and Neil.

[35:52] Meg: Okay.

[35:52] Jessica: And they were redheads, and they were terrifying because we could tell as little kids if they weren't actually sociopaths or psychopaths. There was something going on that was making them behave in that way. They had major behavioral disorders.

[36:12] Meg: Now, how much older were they than you? Because the school only goes through 7th grade or 8th grade.

[36:17] Jessica: One year ahead. Yeah, literally one year ahead of us. But everyone in the school was like it wasn't like, oh, those are mean kids who will do something nasty. Like, it was scary kids, knowing that you were going to school with someone who might eat your face. It's not like two of them. As a duo, they were unpredictable, and that unpredictability made them even scarier. And they did things like there was an old woman who was a French teacher in our school. And even though I'm saying it's an unusual school, it was a freaking prep school on east 62nd street in a mansion. Okay. They went up to her and spat in her face.

[37:02] Meg: Oh, my God.

[37:03] Jessica: Yeah. They notoriously.

[37:05] Meg: How would they not get expelled?

[37:08] Jessica: Well, that's the unusual part of Fleming.

[37:12] Meg: Where it's like, let's talk it out.

[37:17] Jessica: When we would joke that later on, of course, that if you got sent to the principal's office, she'd give you a cupcake. So it's like, Why did you do this now? Don't do it again. Here's a cookie. Go have fun.

[37:29] Meg: Okay.

[37:29] Jessica: So they locked their mother in the basement of their apartment building on East End Avenue and bragged about it. They were not good kids, and they were part of this 84th street gang, and we were terrified. Now I'm trying to remember if they ever did anything to me personally, I think they kind of left the girls alone. But the boys who were younger than them were beaten senseless that's awesome. By them on the regular.

[37:59] Meg: You know what this reminds me of a little bit?

[38:01] Jessica: Tell me.

[38:01] Meg: My Bodyguard. Well, that movie yes. That wonderful movie with Matt Dillon.

[38:09] Jessica: And Adam Baldwin played.

[38:11] Meg: Baldwin?

[38:12] Jessica: The bodyguard? And such a great movie. Ruth Gordon played the grandmother. Yeah. And the father was Martin Mull. The magnificent Martin Mull. Funny that you should mention that because I was like, all right, now I remember. And they eventually went to Browning, which was the school directly across the street from Fleming. And I don't know if they went because they graduated or because they were kicked out and went to Browning. Who knows? But I know they didn't last there long. And then there were many stories about what happened to them. I heard stories that they were in the army. I had heard stories that one was in prison. I heard stories that they murdered each other.

[38:54] Meg: Each other. How do you do that?

[38:57] Jessica: I don't know. But they were so legendary amongst this.

[39:04] Meg: Do you know what happened?

[39:06] Jessica: Well, in My Bodyguard, do you remember finding there's the moment where you find out that the bodyguard has a really fucked up home life and there's something wrong and that's why he has this. So I have looked for these guys online for years. Never found them. You and I talked about this. And last night something popped up on my Facebook notifications, and it was for my Fleming alumni group.

[39:41] Meg: Are you kidding?

[39:42] Jessica: I am not. And Neil posted a photo of him when he was a very little boy with three other little kids, all at Fleming, saying, these were happy times. Hope everyone out there is doing okay, Neil. That's the only thing. And I was like, oh, my God. Well, I researched, I researched, I researched and I found out Adam and Neil are now living very rural lives. One of them owns a pet food and supply store in Woodstock, New York. Okay. And the other one is also involved with animals in some way. But I don't think they live in the same town. The one who owns the pet food place has a partner, woman, wife, I don't know what. Looks very happy, but both he and his brother, their Facebook feeds are filled with Yogic teachings and spiritual healing and all kinds of stuff about dating, like going through trauma and coming out the other side and finding what motivates other people to be so brutal and understanding your place in the world. And I was like, oh, my God, these kids who were like and of course, all these years, I've had the perspective of my childhood self. Like, these are psychopaths. And in fact, as an adult, of course, I can see it now. These kids had something fucked up that happened.

[41:31] Meg: Something happened. We don't know what, but we're assuming that something traumatic happened.

[41:35] Jessica: So it could have been prior to their adoption by the parents that we knew of. Who knows?

[41:43] Meg: Who knows?

[41:44] Jessica: But they, unlike a lot of people, did the work and are now really dedicated themselves to having these crazy, really selfexploratory and meaningful spiritual laws lives. And there you go.

[42:08] Meg: Jessica, you keep talking about your favorite stories that I tell. This is definitely my favorite story. I thought you'd like, oh, my God, I'm riveted. This is incredible stuff. This is incredible. I'm sorry. Will you do a cartoon of this one, please?

[42:27] Jessica: Yes. I don't even know what I could do. I'll think about it.

[42:30] Meg: No, please.

[42:31] Jessica: I will definitely think about it. But I know that you clocked the reference that I made about one of the boys who saved them.

[42:39] Meg: Yes, Robert C. We're going to have.

[42:42] Jessica: To get our acts together to do.

[42:44] Meg: Our very special episode eventually. Yes, back to school. Maybe that's it.

[42:52] Jessica: Maybe it'll be our back to school special, as grim and bananas as that is. Thank you.

[42:59] Meg: Jessica?

[43:00] Jessica: Yes.

[43:01] Meg: You're my favorite person right now because.

[43:04] Jessica: I told you that there was a story of personal redemption and the whole thing.

[43:08] Meg: You could have told me that they're both in prison or whatever. I just love that we started in their youths and now we've gone full circle, and now we know what happened to them. It's a mystery that was solved.

[43:20] Jessica: It is a solved mystery. And there are a couple of people who I'm very close to still who went to Fleming, who listen to this podcast. And I know that I'm not telling anyone that we did this.

[43:35] Meg: And I won't give the heads up to my friend.

[43:37] Jessica: No. Just let them have their collective stroke when we do this.

[43:45] Meg: So what's our tie in?

[43:47] Jessica: Oh, I think that's an easy one today. I think that the 19th Precinct at some point had to book some members of the 84th Street Gang.

[43:57] Meg: Of course. Oh, my gosh. I just had an idea.

[44:00] Jessica: Look them up. Look up mug shots for Farrington, no and Fat Ally.

[44:05] Meg: I was thinking that maybe we could go and do an interview with someone from the 19th Precinct.

[44:12] Jessica: Yes, please. I wonder if any of them are still there who are there at the time.

[44:16] Meg: Well, even if they aren't, they might be like, you can find them at the bar around the corner, right?

[44:22] Jessica: Yes.

[44:23] Meg: Okay, we got to get our-

[44:25] Jessica: Good we have our mobile recorder.

[44:27] Meg: Yes. We are going to do interviews of people out on the street, but we haven't quite gotten our act together, but it's coming up in the future, and I think this episode sets us up for a really great ask. All you Fleming people out there, tell your friends about the podcast.

[44:50] Jessica: If you went to Fleming and or you still know people who went to Fleming, please spread this podcast around and spread it with this story. You know as well as anybody that everyone wants to know what happened to these guys.