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

[00:19] Jessica: And I am Jessica. And Meg and I have been friends since 1982. We went to middle school and high school together here in New York City, where we still live.

[00:30] Meg: And where we are currently podcasting about New York City in the 80s. I do Ripped from the Headlines.

[00:35] Jessica: And I do pop culture.

[00:37] Meg: Jessica, I was wondering if you wanted to share with our listeners our strange, Crazy Eddie-adjacent experiences lately.

[00:47] Jessica: Oh, God, yes. Okay, 

[00:53] Meg: Explain.

[00:54] Jessica: Well, as people of a certain generation might do, one is always looking for ways to tighten the skin around one's eyes so one doesn't look like they are a step from the grave. So I told you about a Peter Thomas Roth. And no, we're not getting a kickback for this. This is not an advertisement. It's merely an endorsement, a personal endorsement, like eye bag shrinker. And so I was very enthusiastic about it.

[01:27] Meg: Right, she made me try it when I wasn't really in the mood to, but whatever. It was pretty cool.

[01:36] Jessica: Right. Well I mean, you should be telling this because you were the one who was nabbed. But what happened to you happened to my dad, who then brought me into this. So kick off what happened to you and then I'll give my.

[01:51] Meg: I’m walking down Madison Avenue, and I'm actually trying to call my father, but he isn't picking up, so I don't have an excuse. When the woman on the street tries to give me a sample. She's on the sidewalk, and she's a very elegant young woman. And I take the sample, and before I know it, I've been somehow kidnapped into the storefront of this establishment where she's trying to sell me $500 worth, of eye tightening stuff. And I was so embarrassed, and I was telling Jessica about it, and then she told me I shouldn't feel so bad.

[02:32] Jessica: Well, because so when my father was nabbed so this is on Madison in, like, the 80s? Yeah. 70s. So my father had described it to me as, ‘oh, this very pretty young lady was like she saw me and was like, oh, I'm sure that's some old codger who, I'm bored at my store, so I'll try products on him.’ And I was like, dad, she was trying to sell you products? Like, what are you talking about? He's like, ‘no, who would sell that to me?’ Her. She would, but he's like, you might love it. So I'm like, okay, great. A, you think that I look like my face is falling down, and B, who doesn't like products? So I go over there, and I think that you said that the description I'm about to give is what was so accurate. So keep in mind that the Peter Thomas Roth goo, which does a great job, is like $70 for a huge tube. So this woman drags me in. She's like, oh, no, it was a guy? It was a guy. And he's like, your skin is very nice, but maybe you like better. And I was like, oh, you're Israeli. He was like, you're from Israel?

[03:48] Meg: It was the hardest sell to the point where I was saying, you're very good at this.

[03:55] Jessica: I said the exact same thing.

[03:56] Meg: Her eyes, and she, without even blinking, said, no, you are the most beautiful woman I've ever seen.

[04:04] Jessica: Damn. You were like, brava.

[04:07] Meg: And by the end, I was trying to get out of there because I thought, honestly, they were going, it was a kidnapping.

[04:19] Jessica: And they weren't cute or pleasant enough to bring on a Stockholm syndrome. It was just a pure kidnapping.

[04:26] Meg: But give them your credit card so you can escape.

[04:29] Jessica: Well, they were very disappointed with me because I was like, I'm Jewish. I'm going to do it right back to you. So I stayed in the chair for a really long time while he slathered me with a variety of yes, effective goo's. They were very effective. P.S. No more effective than the Peter Thomas blah blah. And he kept on saying, “So now you want to buy?” And it was like, you know what it was like? It was like the products version of going to B & H. 

[04:58] Meg: Yes. That's what I've been trying to get at.

[05:00] Jessica: Yes, or Crazy Eddie or even for people who have been to the city as tourists, there are those stores that are always going out of business, like on Fifth Avenue around Empire State Building. They've been going out of business for 40 years, and it's the hardest selling. “You want that Statue of Liberty? I gave it to you for $5. Now it's ten.” You're like what?

[05:30] Meg: I gave her my credit card, and she accidentally charged too much on it. I was like, oh, my God. I'm scared for my life. I need to get out of here.

[05:40] Jessica: Well, I just kept saying to the guy I just kept laughing at him and being like, I'm not buying 900, at the time, it was $900. I'm not buying $900 worth of goo that you've packaged in these things that look like syringes so that it will somehow fool the customer into thinking that it's like an injectable. And then it became a showdown, because I wasn't going to buy, and he wasn't going to let me leave without buying.

[06:11] Meg: I'm actually having PTSD right now. I'm so scared.

[06:15] Jessica: And then he kept giving me cards to get a facial. Which you got, too. Yeah. And I was like, can I use this without buying? He was like, well, you should really buy the, and I was like, Can I use it without buying?

[06:29] Meg: And it was a public service announcement.

[06:32] Jessica: Yes. Don’t get roped.

[06:33] Meg: Don't take a sample.

[06:35] Jessica: It's become like a TikTok thing. I didn't know this, but I was in Sephora when I bought the eye cream, that's $70. The guy who was helping me was like, oh, you must have seen this on TikTok. Everyone's coming in for it. And I was like, no. What is this exotic TikTok you speak of? And furthermore, what? And he showed me that this woman kept doing TikTok videos that were so effective that the company called her to ask if she would be a rep for the company. 

[07:11] Meg: Oh, Lord. 

[07:13] Jessica: Can you imagine? Anyway, so crazy. You were crazy, Eddied.

[07:16] Meg: I was crazy Eddied.

[07:16] Jessica: This whole exchange reminds me of what I feel is a really undervalued Adam Sandler movie, You don't mess with the Zohan. That makes fun of this entire New York Israeli discount culture. Yes, to me, it is like screamingly funny. So if anyone wants to have a little taste of how psychotic this is, I actually recommend that movie.

[07:54] Meg: So my engagement question for you is when you were younger, in the 80s, were you madly, passionately into an artist or an actor or music or director, some kind of person who then a decade or so later, you find out is a total douchebag and you just get totally disillusioned? Does that ring a bell at all?

[08:21] Jessica: Well, A, number one, Tom Cruise.

[08:25] Meg: Okay.

[08:26] Jessica: When Risky Business came out and he was, like, still covered in puppy fat, but I was like, OOH, preppy boy with something interesting. Little did I know that something interesting was Scientology, but he was one. And the other people who I was really excited about that I can remember at the time were either pop stars that I thought were sexy because I love any Brit who looks like he's about to die of consumption, or like David Bowie or brilliant.

[09:01] Meg: But like David Bowie didn't fall from grace.

[09:03] Jessica: Oh, there's another one. What am I saying? Our darling friend Alé and I were obsessed with the movie, which, by the way, is an amazing movie. The Year of Living Dangerously that starred Sigourney Weaver and a young and smoking hot and not crazy at the time, Mel Gibson.

[09:25] Meg: Oh, Mel Gibson. That's a very good one. Thank you.

[09:28] Jessica: He was so freaking sexy. That movie is one of the sexiest movies that has ever been committed to celluloid.

[09:39] Meg: What do we do with Mel Gibson?

[09:40] Jessica: We don't, right?

[09:41] Meg: Okay, let's leave that there. But you get where I'm going.

[09:44] Jessica: I'm feeling you, sister. I'm picking up what you're putting down.

[09:47] Meg: All right. My sources for today: Village Voice, 1988, New Yorker, 2011, the Death of an Artist, which is an incredible podcast if you are interested in the subject matter, it tells the story in so much more detail and I absolutely, highly, highly recommend it. New York Times, 1985. An Art Forum. On September 8, 1985, at 05:30, A.M., Carl Andre, the preeminent minimalist sculptor who had pieces in the permanent collections of the Guggenheim, MoMA and the Tate, called 911 and wailed to the operator that his wife had committed suicide. Quote, “What happened was we had, my wife is an artist and I am an artist and we had a quarrel about the fact that I was more exposed to the public than she was. And she went to the bedroom, and I went after her, and she went out of the window.” Do you remember last week when we did the spy magazine story?

[10:55] Jessica: Yeah. Miraculously, I still remember that.

[10:58] Meg: And that you read from the crime blotter. And I was intrigued.

[11:03] Jessica: Yes.

[11:04] Meg: So I looked it up.

[11:06] Jessica: Look, I love a defenestration as much as the next person. Please elaborate.

[11:12] Meg: Anna Mendieta, the artist's wife Carl was referring to, had fallen from the window of apartment 34 E at 300 Mercer Street between Waverly Place and East 8th street, a couple blocks east of Washington Square Park. It's basically the only high rise in that neighborhood, so it's a very identifiable building. Her body had landed on the first floor roof of Delian Deli, next door to the high rise. She was wearing only blue underwear.

[11:44] Jessica: This isn't looking so good for Carl.

[11:47] Meg: When the police arrived at the apartment, Carl, 50 years old, five foot seven and 175 pounds, was dressed in his signature overalls. Do you have a picture of him? He's portly and he's got a big beard.

[12:02] Jessica: I know the type.

[12:03] Meg: Quote, “My life is over. My wife is gone. I can't believe it happened. It's a tragedy.” The police took note of many empty wine and champagne bottles in the kitchen and in the bedroom, sheets were strewn about and a chair was overturned. The large sliding window in the bedroom was wide open. Quote, “I think she jumped. Did you see her jump? No. How do you know? I just know.” Carl told the police that he and Anna were watching the Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy movie Without Love on TV and drinking wine. She didn't like the movie, so she said she was going to bed, but he wanted to stay up. Quote, “If that's what she wanted, maybe I did kill her then. You see, I am a very successful artist and she wasn't. And maybe that got to her, and in that sense, I did kill her.”

[12:56] Jessica: Okay, drama queen. Which is, by the way, a phrase I don't like and popped out of my mouth. But, yeah, that's just creepy. Don't like it.

[13:06] Meg: He said he watched the rest of the movie, went into the bedroom, but couldn't find her, went out to the living room, and after searching the bedroom again, called 911. While one officer phoned his supervising lieutenant, Carl took a catalog of his work from the bookcase and showed the other officer some of his work.

[13:27] Jessica: Are you kidding me right now? He showed him his work?

[13:30] Meg: Yes, a catalog of his work. I can't specifically Stone Field sculpture, which had been commissioned by the city of Hartford for $87,000. The police took Carl over to the West 10th street precinct at 08:00 a.m. And noticed he had a scratch on his nose. Carl said he'd been by the door on his balcony when a gust of wind blew the door open into his face. The Hepburn Tracy film, which again, was on TV. So they know when.

[14:01] Jessica: when it was on.

[14:04] Meg: This isn't like streaming. It had ended at 3:30, and Anna fell at 5:30. So there was an hour and a half gap in Carl's story that he had no interest in clearing up. They walked him back to the apartment to take photographs. And here, I must say, the police, I won't go into too much detail about it, but I wouldn't say that they were totally on their game. They were not preserving the crime scene. So they took him back to the apartment and when he's back in the apartment, he makes a few phone calls. Quote “Hello, this is Carl. Anna is dead. We'll have to cancel our dinner engagement for tonight. That was a message he'd left on somebody's answering machine.”

[14:47] Jessica: Sociopath.

[14:49] Meg: When Natalie, Anna's friend, called, Carl answered and said she wasn't home. Natalie asked him to tell Anna to call her. Carl said he'd give her the message. Carl did not call any members of Anna's family. Now, for some background. Anna, who was 35 when she died, was born into a wealthy family in Cuba. Anna's parents were worried. For 12 year old Anna and her 15 year old sister's safety. The revolution spearheaded by Castro made Cuba a not very ideal environment for young children. So in 1961, they sent the girls to America under a program intended to house and educate the young Cuban refugees. Unfortunately, it just shuttled the girls between foster homes and orphanages and refugee camps for years. So she had a very unstable childhood, but she was a driven student. And when she was at the University of Iowa, she fell in love with the avant garde and decided to become an artist.

[15:54] Jessica: She wound up in Iowa?

[15:56] Meg: Yeah.

[15:56] Jessica: How weird.

[15:57] Meg: I think that was just the local university because she was.

[16:02] Jessica: Oh! She was shuttled around. She was shuttled around.

[16:04] Meg: Okay. Her performance based work focused on blood and violence towards women. For example, in response to the rape and murder of a classmate of hers. Yeah. She created a piece in which she bound her naked body, covered in blood, on a kitchen table for 2 hours and recorded viewers responses. She also worked with nature, creating female silhouettes in mud, sand and grass. Quote, carrying on a dialogue between the landscape and the female body. That's part of her artist statement. She was a part of the emerging genre of land art and performance art. When she came to New York, she joined Artists in Residence, or AIR, the first gallery in the United States established for women. It is there, in the late 70s, where she met Carl Andre, who was speaking on a panel entitled, quote, “How has women's art practices affected male artist social attitudes?”

[17:13] Jessica: Late 70s. File that under things that don't age well.

[17:20] Meg: Carl Andre was very entrenched in the New York art scene at this point, he'd hang out at Cedar Tavern in Max's Kansas City, where the burly brutish minimalists would hang out in the front at the bar, and Warhol and his crowd would have a table in the back. They were not friends with each other. Carl had grown up working class in Quincy, Massachusetts. He went to Andover on a scholarship and dropped out of Kenyon after one semester.

[17:50] Jessica: Wait, what?

[17:51] Meg: Yeah, he went to Kenyon one semester.

[17:56] Jessica: I feel so, now I'm on his side. Go Kenyon. Sorry. Go ahead.

[18:00] Meg: In the 1950s, Andover was a fantastic place to be if you were a young male avant garde artist. Carl made great friends there, and years later ended up rooming in New York with old Andover classmates Hollis Frampton, the filmmaker, and Frank Stella, the painter.

[18:19] Jessica: No way. Yeah.

[18:20] Meg: They all had a huge impact on each other's lives and work. Carl Andre was known for his large scale linear structures made from raw materials. Minimalism was a reaction against the abstract expressionism of artists like Jackson Pollock, and Carl's sculptures are geometric and horizontal and meant to be touched and even walked on. His horizontal structures are considered non-hierarchical because they're mostly flat against the ground. It's interesting. His famous piece Lever, is a single line of 137 fire bricks. People love it and pay big bucks for it.

[19:06] Jessica: Wait, I'm so sorry. So 137 bricks put end to end in a space is his most important and remembered work.

[19:16] Meg: I will not say that's the most important. He is huge.

[19:20] Jessica: I'm hearing you. I'm just trying to make sure I understand what you're saying.

[19:23] Meg: I will say that he is the kind of art and minimalists in general are the kind of artists that you see the work and you go, I could do that. But the point is, you didn't.

[19:35] Jessica: You didn't.

[19:37] Meg: And, I mean, I have been in a room with his work before, and it does have an effect, and I'm not an art critic of any kind.

[19:45] Jessica: Fair enough.

[19:46] Meg: So, yes, people were paying big bucks for it and still do, especially, though, in the late 70s. But as the 80s rolled in, there was a growing movement away from sculpture made of heavy, unyielding materials and towards more organic work, like what Anna was doing. At the time of her death. She'd won the coveted Rome Prize and a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship and an NEA grant.

[20:12] Jessica: Wow.

[20:13] Meg: No slouch. She was having her moment.

[20:17] Jessica: For sure. 

[20:18] Meg: Anna and Carl's relationship was a volatile one. They dated on and off for five years before marrying in January 1985 in a small ceremony in Rome where Anna had an art residency. They fought loud and hard and very publicly, often after copious drinking. They had a large social circle who unanimously agreed it was not fun to hang out with them when they went at it. Quote, this is from a friend, “They both had fierce, oversized, artistic egos that blazing confidence in their own talent, combined with a fine tuned insecurity that could pick up the only criticism in a room full of applause.”

[21:01] Jessica: What a great quote.

[21:02] Meg: I know. And then nine months after their wedding, Anna fell to her death. In the days after his arrest, Carl's many influential friends rallied to his defense. Sound familiar? Frank Stella contributed $50,000 cash to the $250,000 bail. After three years and three grand juries Carl Andre was indicted for murder. The trial was held down the hall from the Robert Chamber’s trial.

[21:31] Jessica: Really?

[21:32] Meg: Really.

[21:32] Jessica: Wow.

[21:33] Meg: Robert Chamber’s got a lot more media attention. The defense waived his right to a jury trial, so they wanted a bench trial, and Judge Alvin Schlesinger decided the case all alone. Frankly, the jury would not have liked Carl Andre.

[21:50] Jessica: I don't like him, and I haven't even laid eyes on him.

[21:53] Meg: He was aloof and, let's just say, unattractive. And his odd responses after her death, how are you going to.

[22:02] Jessica: How does a man 15 years older, who's unattractive, unattractive and a jerk get this lovely woman?

[22:10] Meg: Apparently, he was a huge romantic and would woo women, and he was quite a womanizer. And he did the whole champagne, flowers, let me whisk you off to Perry thing.

[22:21] Jessica: Okay, that happens.

[22:23] Meg: The prosecution presented evidence of Anna's extreme fear of heights, which would have kept her from the bedroom's high sliding glass windows, ruling out suicide or an accident. Also, there were no footprints on the windowsill, and a doorman next door heard “No, no,no.” And then a big crash. Unfortunately, he was discredited because he'd been in Vietnam, and they said he had audio hallucinations. The prosecution was not allowed to let her sister talk about how Anna had evidence of Carl's many affairs and had already spoken to a divorce lawyer. The defense described Anna as brace yourself.

[23:11] Jessica: I'm expecting something. That's not very pro-woman.

[23:14] Meg: Also racist.

[23:15] Jessica: Oh, is she a fiery Latina. 

[23:19] Meg: She sure as hell is. She also hated men, and she had a death wish. She's got all that bloody art. They used her art against her

[23:28] Jessica: Unsurprising.

[23:29] Meg: And they said she was fascinated with Santeria, so they made it out like she was a witch.

[23:35] Jessica: Are you kidding me right now?

[23:37] Meg: But he didn't even call it, defense lawyer Jack Huffinger kept calling it Voodoo. He didn't even call it Santeria.

[23:43] Jessica: So she's a voodoo priest, a fiery Latina voodoo priestess, 

[23:48] Meg: and a drunk 

[23:49] Jessica: Excuse me. I want to get the whole sentence right. A drunk, fiery, Latina, Voodoo priestess who had it coming. 

[23:59] Meg: Who foresaw her own suicide and decided to enact it as an active artistic expression.

[24:09] Jessica: Oh, wow. That is really, really. If that's the defense, that's a really, wow.

[24:16] Meg: Yeah. They suggested that she committed sub-intentional suicide.

[24:21] Jessica: Oh, please explain that.

[24:22] Meg: She'd been drinking and went to sleep, got up to open the window, climbed up on the radiator in front of the sill, and lost her balance. So she didn't mean to commit suicide.

[24:34] Jessica: So it was like suicidal ideation in action.

[24:37] Meg: Something like that. And she was very short. She was less, like I think she was, like, barely 5ft. So she couldn't accidentally fall out this window unless she was standing on top of the sill. And when they didn't find footprints, Judge Schlesinger determined there was not enough evidence to convict, and Carl Andre was found not guilty. Oh, I should also tell you, they tested her alcohol level, and it was super high. They never tested his.

[25:10] Jessica: Interesting.

[25:11] Meg: I mean, what the hell? Oh, and guess what.

[25:14] Jessica: What?

[25:15] Meg: Carl Andre walks amongst us. In fact, he still lives in that apartment on Mercer.

[25:21] Jessica: The monster. Wait, so he never went to prison? He never had anything? He had him?

[25:25] Meg: No. And he's been doing art all these years. When museums like the Guggenheim and the Tate and Moca exhibit his work, Mendietta's supporters protest with posters saying, “Donde Esta Anna Mendieta.”

[25:41] Jessica: Chilling and quite rightly.

[25:43] Meg: In 1995, the Gorilla Girls.

[25:47] Jessica: I remember that well.

[25:48] Meg: Issued a poster calling Andre the O.J. of the art world.

[25:53] Jessica: OOH. Oof.

[25:54] Meg: Yeah. And the Gorilla Girls, if people don't know, is a feminist anonymous artist collective that acts in opposition to white male genius, specifically. And they were formed in 1985. I think somebody should do a story on them.

[26:10] Jessica: And for anyone who's listening, who doesn't automatically know or make the connection, that's G-U-E not G-O.

[26:18] Meg: Yes. And Carl Andre supporters accuse, quote, “the feminist cabal for” 

[26:27] Jessica: Is that also the voodoo priestesses? And the Santoria.

[26:31] Meg: Apparently, there's a feminist cabal. And that's that. Poor Andre. In 2018, The New York Times published a belated obituary for Anna Mendieta because they didn't do it at the time. Quote, “Mendieta's art, sometimes violent, often unapologetically feminist and usually raw, left an indelible mark before her life was cut short.”

[26:59] Jessica: What motivated them to run that in 2018? Was it her, the Mendietta family?

[27:06] Meg: No, they basically realized that they hadn't been running a lot of obituaries of people who weren't white men, and so they did a whole series of obituaries we missed.

[27:19] Jessica: Oh, my God. Yeah, see, that is fascinating to me.

[27:25] Meg: And yeah, so getting back to my original question, this whole, like, the genius problem. I mean, Mel Gibson, that was an easy one, right. But, like, people or maybe it's not easy for everybody. People have a struggle with Woody Allen. They're like, what do you mean? I cannot watch those movies anymore? Can you enjoy Carl Andre work? The genius problem is also that we don't want to believe it's true.

[27:48] Jessica: See, that's not. Really? See.

[27:52] Meg: Many people don't want to believe it's true.

[27:53] Jessica: I see.

[27:54] Meg: Many people don't want to believe that Michael Jackson did awful things to those little boys.

[27:59] Jessica: Yeah, well.

[28:02] Meg: Many people didn't want to believe O.J. Simpson killed his wife.

[28:03] Jessica: No. Yes, I completely understand. I was thinking about the conversation, the cultural conversation about even if you do believe it. Can you then separate the artist from the art?

[28:17] Meg: Yes. And there’s that question too. 

[28:18] Jessica: And you know what? I'm actually going to tell you what I think about that. I feel like. I am so anti-cancel culture that I can barely express it. To say that something cannot be watched, not only is it silly and short sighted and censorious, but it's also taking away a context that's really important to understand why we are where we are right now. To take away the voice of an artist because you don't like what they did in some other realm, it's like, well, okay, so if you know that that person was, in fact a creep, factor that into the work that you're looking at and have a new critique or understanding or dialogue about the work. But to throw it away and put blinders on and pretend it didn't happen is madness.

[29:21] Meg: Well, what the Guerilla Girls have suggested and what museums have yet to do, is to include on the, what's it called? The wall plaque.

[29:32] Jessica: Yeah. On the notes. Whatever.

[29:33] Meg: The notes next to the work of art, the full story. Because at this point, museums don't reference her at all. They don't reference her death in any way when they are talking about his life next to his work. And that feels incomplete.

[29:52] Jessica: Well, and I would even say with my parameters that I just laid out, include that information for any work that he did after her death, because it's part of the flow of the history, it's the flow of the context. Oy gevalt, who look.

[30:09] Meg: And the other thing, I mean, this is super cool. Her work is now very revered, and not just because of her death. I mean, it definitely got some publicity because of that but people absolutely recognize her as being groundbreaking.

[30:23] Jessica: No, that's the quickest way to become huge in the art world now, isn't it?

[30:26] Meg: But what I'm saying, it wasn't just because of that.

[30:28] Jessica: No.

[30:28] Meg: And many of her supporters hate the fact that her death is so inextricably linked to her work.

[30:35] Jessica: Obviously, everything about this man.

[30:37] Meg: Wait, till I show you.

[30:38] Jessica: Wildly unappealing. I was already thinking about Googling. Reaching for my phone and Googling him. That's very thoughtful. Yeah. Let's take a little break and do that.

[30:58] Meg: So I just showed you a picture of Carl Andre and Anna Mindieta.

[31:03] Jessica: I think that the word I used to describe him was pukey.

[31:07] Meg: Yeah.

[31:07] Jessica: And she was very pretty. Lovely.

[31:10] Meg: All right, so what do you have for me today, Jessica?

[31:13] Jessica: What do you think of clubs in New York?

[31:16] Meg: Clubs? Oh, you mean like the Players Club? 

[31:20] Jessica: Yes

[31:21] Meg: I like it. It's nice to have a really beautiful building to go to, and I don't really have any friends there, actually. I would if I went more often, but I certainly like the nice people I meet there. For me, it's mostly about the building.

[31:37] Jessica: Yeah.

[31:38] Meg: Right on the Gramercy park.

[31:40] Jessica: And it’s right next door to the national arts. So very beautiful. I used to belong to a club, and I loved it deeply. And unfortunately, COVID killed it.

[31:50] Meg: Are you serious? I didn't know that.

[31:52] Jessica: Yeah, Norwood closed.

[31:53] Meg: I had no idea.

[31:54] Jessica: It is genuinely a tragedy. It was the most delightful arts club.

[31:59] Meg: What are they doing with that space?

[32:01] Jessica: I have no idea.

[32:03] Meg: Oh, that was such a great space.

[32:04] Jessica: Yeah, it was amazing. Anyway, clubs are important, and people always want to find their own kind. They always gravitate to places to hang out where they can feel comfortable. I mean, the entire sitcom, Cheers was based on this premise. And so what I think is really kind of fun about the 80s and most of this started in the 70s, but it was definitely in full flower in the 80s, that there was another kind of club that existed in New York, and that club was theoretically open to everybody, but it really wasn't. And those were certain restaurants in the city, one that pops up in pop culture quite a bit in movies. And if it isn't named specifically, it's referred to by description is Raos.

[33:02] Meg: Right.

[33:04] Jessica: In Harlem. Raos started out as a family run Italian restaurant that was just a restaurant 

[33:14] Meg: But you can’t get a reservation there.

[33:18]Jessica: You inherit a table. Theoretically, there's one table that's always open, but forget it. And the place is populated by, let's say what it is, mobsters and actors who like to watch the mobsters and the mobsters like to watch the actors. So that is a perfect example of restaurant as a club. But I know that we had a special request from your mom to talk about one of these places. I thought, well, if we're going to talk about it, funny enough, if the restaurant that your mom wanted to talk about was the yin, there is a yang to it. So we're going to talk about these two places together. But before we do, there's one other thing that this topic made me think about, which is that in New York City, there really was a society like, quote, high society. There was still a very vibrant, this is in the 80s, a vibrant world of people who were really almost like remnants from the gilded age. It was all inherited wealth. They didn't do anything, but they were on the board of a lot of things like NAN Kempner and CZ Guest and names that no one would know anymore because they're just not popular or important because the whole idea of having this echelon pretty much died out as these people themselves aged and died out and their influence was replaced with celebrity. The socialites of New York really were the trendsetters. I mean, I know that people love the gilded age, and it was a, really it's a perfect example. They were setting trends and they were saying what was important. And there was in the 19th century, there was, you know, society was composed of I think it was 400 people, because that's exactly how many people fit in Mrs. Astor's ballroom. This was these people anyway, but they don't exist anymore. Or they do, but they're not no, it doesn't exist.

[35:25] Meg: They don't have the same influence.

[35:27] Jessica: Those people had a club, and that club was a restaurant called Mortimers, which is what your mom wanted to have us talk about. And I actually think that your mom would be a wonderful person to interview for the podcast, to talk about it, because Mortimers was really popular at a time when your mom might have been going there. Who knows?

[35:49] Meg: I didn't ask her. I mean, it was in the middle of dinner, and I didn't follow up and go, why do you want us to talk about it?

[35:55] Jessica: Well, Mortimers. Mortimers. I read something that said, and this was so perfect. People used to go to restaurants in New York to see and be seen, and it was about the clientele. Celebrity chefs did not exist. The food had to be good. Sometimes it didn't even have to be good, but if the place was popular, it was run by people who had started it, who were really hosts. They knew that their job was to have a party.

[36:29] Meg: Kind of like Nell's.

[36:31] Jessica: Yes. Nell's was more nightclub-y.

[36:33] Meg: Right.

[36:34] Jessica: But Nell's was an updated

[36:40] Meg: Or Elaine’s?

[36:41] Jessica: Well, that's the Yang to Mortimer. Okay. So Mortimers. Yes. Look at you. Look at you. Oh, my God. So, Mortimers will start with Mortimers. That was the hangout of the Wasp socialites. And what I love about it and this is a theme that comes up frequently because I've become such a yenta over the last ten years, like, a lot of super preppy things that we talk about, Mortimers was actually started by a Jewish guy named Glenn, I think Barrenbaum and Glenn had been in the shmata business, and Glenn wanted to get out of the shmata business and get into having a restaurant. And he was an executive for, like, a men's clothing chain, and he did that during the day, and he got his restaurant up and running at night, and he named it Mortimers because I think his boss was named Mortimer or like a close friend, Mortimer. So he wasn't even a Mortimer. He was really savvy about getting the people in the neighborhood to come in and to make it into their local joint. But the people in the neighborhood.

[37:59] Meg: What neighborhood? 

[38:00] Jessica: 75th and Lex.

[38:01] Meg: Okay.

[38:02] Jessica: So he knew that the people coming in were going to be mostly women at first because they're lunching there, and the men are ostensibly on Wall Street or Madison Avenue. The women are coming from Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue. So he's perfectly primed, socialite central and notoriously, also hilariously, the food was so inexpensive that it was like a joke, like a green salad was $0.85. 

[38:35] Meg: What? 

[38:36] Jessica: So all of these women started going there, and they created the scene because those women, once they gave something their seal of approval. That was it. And they would flock in. So I have a little excerpt that I'm going to read because it's better than anything I could possibly say about this. ‘Owning a restaurant was a common daydream for a lot of men of Glenn's generation of the 20th century. It came with all the imagined ingredients of daily pleasure, food and drink, and the convivial, the reputation of those who possessed famous high end establishments like 21, Le Pavillon, the Colony, La Cote Basque, Covaris, or Le Cirque, could also gain status. So Glenn is getting status as the gatekeeper. Glenn knew exactly what he wanted, whom he wanted for clientele, and what his menu would be for that clientele. That know how was his ace and how he got to be a valued executive in the first place. The previous business at that location had been a faux pine paneled room and bar of no particular style, but neat and clean, with two windows open to the avenue and the street corner.’ That goes on. 

[39:52] Meg: So they can see the people walking by?

[39:54] Jessica: People walking and they can be seen. By the beginning of the 1980s and the Reagan era, it was without peer socially. In New York, Jackie Kennedy Onassis was a regular, as were Beverly Sills, international party giver, Ludovic Autet, Anne Ford Johnson, acid tongued but highly popular, Jerry Zipkin. Anne Slater, the dazzling blonde whose signature was her blue glasses. Pat Kennedy Lawford. Man about town, John Gallagher, Liz Fonderis, interior decorator, Albert Hadley, Annette and Oscar de la Renta, the Lauders, John F Kennedy Jr., Helen Gurley Brown, Joan Rivers, and on and on and on goes the list, including the crisply, I love this description, the crisply, chic and gentle Lee Thaw, whose name the bitchy Jerry Zipkin liked to pronounce as Lee-thal. There's Ahmed Ertigan, Bobby Short, who played at the Carlyle, 

Poppy Thomas, CZ guest, Nan Kempner, who lunched there every day, all snazzed up because she never left her apartment at 79th and Park without looking smashing. And Pat Buckley, Nan's partner in chic, who staged the annual Costume Institute gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where all the swells and the knobs turned out looking glam. And what a perfect example, right? Because when Anna Wintour took over Vogue, the Metropolitan Gala became a celebrity event. And it used to just be rich people eating rubber chicken. That's what Mortimers was. And I also always thought that the restaurant Swifty's, which was another type of restaurant like this, was owned by Swifty Lazar, the famous agent, who was 3ft tall and had giant black framed glasses. Turns out that Swifty was actually the name of a dog that Glenn had a pug, and it was an offshoot.

[42:03] Meg: Oh, so Glenn was in charge of Swifty’s too?

[42:05] Jessica: Or in some way affiliated? Yes. And on the other hand so, to go back to your jumping the gun, which I welcome because I love when you get excited about this stuff. Yay. There was Elaine's. And Elaine's was the Jewish and artistic equivalent of yeah, Mortimer.

[42:25] Meg: Yeah. Mortimer jewish. I guess I was thinking it was more publishing. Am I crazy?

[42:30] Jessica: Well, it's writers. It was a very writerly place. And again, it was started by someone who knew that the whole point of having a place was to have a party. And so she created an environment. And her restaurant started out as basically like just a crappy little Italian restaurant. And then a couple of the literati started going. Elaine loved her writers, but Elaine was also really difficult. So Glenn curried favor with these women who were also Truman Capote's swans. So these elegant women, he was the best and most accommodating. Elaine was a jerk. She was an unbelievable jerk, but highly entertaining and very smart and very funny and famously would wear these giant, colorful moo moos with her giant glasses and had a bosom that was like the prow of a ship. And so she was this acerbic earth mother who held court. And while Glenn had favorites for sure, Elaine went one further and would save tables for people who she adored and would openly antagonize people who she didn't like at her place. So here's another little excerpt. And by the way, Elaine's, it entered the public consciousness because of her number one favorite client, Woody Allen.

[44:04] Meg: Yeah.

[44:06] Jessica: And he put Elaine's in Manhattan. The film Manhattan. And that's how it became exactly, that embarrassing scene. So the article is talking about how Elaine's, you know, Elaine favored certain people, and then it goes on to say, by no means did everyone receive the same warm hearted reception. And there were multiple times her ferocious self assurance was all but too animated. After enduring a heated argument with her writer, Norman Mailer swore never to return and wrote her a letter of complaint. Elaine scrawled ‘boring’ across the top before sending it back. When Sylvester Stallone refused to hang his expensive coat on the universal rack, she blankly asked, ‘why is it the only coat you have?’ In 1998, Elaine was even arrested and subsequently spent the night in prison after she slapped a customer, complaining that ‘he got in my face.’ Bold, brave, fearless and confident, Elaine was in charge. It was common knowledge that it was her way or the highway. Even on her 80th birthday, Elaine confessed she still had to refrain from throwing punches at customers, telling Vanity Fair, ‘time was when men were men. Now they call a lawyer.’ That's wild. The yin and the yang. And there are tons of restaurants popping up around the city all the time. And I sort of feel like after having read this, that we need to hearken back to the days when a restaurant was really a party. I have a dear friend who is no longer with us, but a Kenyon friend. Her name is Katrine, and she was brilliant at this. She was the next Elaine. If only it could have happened for her. But she had one of the first bars in Williamsburg, when Williamsburg started getting developed. It was called The Stinger, and I think it was on Union. I can't remember exactly. And it's sad that I can't remember, because I bartended for her for a summer. She was a genius at being the party. And that place was so packed all the time that she had to figure out how to thin out the crowd. And at one point, the bouncer would tell her, well, the majority of people you have coming in right now is X demographic. Don't serve Y alcohol because that's their drink. And indeed, it would thin out the crowd. But she had over the bar. Get naked, you get a free shot. Have sex on the bar, you get the whole bottle. And someone did it once, which was unfortunate, I'm sure, but just the fact that that was up there was an announcement that every night there was going to be a raucous party, and it was.

[47:22] Meg: Well, I was thinking that our crossover was kind of like the gatekeepers, a little bit like I was imagining all those artists who were hanging out at Max's Kansas City and how they were the gatekeepers to the art world and they weren't letting in the women. Certainly, not the Latin women. And then we've got the Mortimer's gatekeepers and the Raos’s gatekeepers and the Elaine gatekeepers.

[47:51] Jessica: I agree with you. I actually thought of something that was just much more concrete, which is Woody Allen, because we talked about cancel culture, and then there he was at Elaine's. So, that was what was staring at me. But I think yours is equally on.

[48:10] Meg: Point in good news.

[48:13] Jessica: Is there some?

[48:16] Meg: We are dropping our first field trip on, oh, wait, no, it's already happened. We already did it. By the time this episode comes out, we will have already done our field trip. So if you didn't listen to it, it dropped on Thursday. Check it out.

[48:31] Jessica: Oh, my gosh. I love our field trip. It's so wonderful.

[48:36] Meg: And we have another one on the books.

[48:38] Jessica: Yay. Yes. It's our new feature. Exciting.

[48:42] Meg: If you have a chance, review us on Apple podcast.

[48:45] Jessica: Thanks, Meg.