Meg: Welcome to Desperately Seeking the 80s. I’m Meg and I’m Jessica.

Jessica: 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.

Meg: and where we are podcasting about New York City in the 80’s. I do rip from the headlines.

Jessica: And I handle pop culture.

Meg: Jessica, today I would like to share one of the many texts that our dear friend Nick has been sending us, specifically the one about Mortimers, because it is so frigging glamorous.

Jessica: Okay, I do know what you're talking about, and I second the motion to be Nick.

Meg: “OMG Mortimers. The last time I went, I had lunch with Nancy Biddle, Nick Dunn and Jean Harvey Vanderbilt. Mrs. Onassis and Mr. Templesman were at the next table with Philippe de Montebello. I will remember the chicken payard until I die. Also, the big cocktail at Mortimer's was the Bullshot, which should be revived for brunch and replace the Bloody Mary. Also Glenn Bernbaum's pug Swifty was named after Swifty Lazar, which made Lazar furious.

Jessica: Well, because Swifty Lazar did look like a pug.

Meg: We've got to post a picture of him.

Jessica: All right.

Meg: Swifty's was started by Stephen ATO and Robert Caravaggi, who were the former chef and matri d, respectively, of Mortimers. Such good intel.

Jessica: That was really, really good intel. I think that we need to have Nick on the show to talk about his, because he really did live a life amongst the socialites of New York. And, Nick, I know you're listening, so if I've said something, I'm about to quote you, and if I say it incorrectly, I know you'll let me know. But he said, you know, there are all of these worlds in New York that we have perceived as being finished. And he says, specifically the socialite world that I was talking about with Mortimers. And he said, not so. It's still very much alive. Things are just less transparent. Okay, so I am really looking forward to Nick coming in with what is happening.

Meg: Yes. Pull back the curtain. We want to know.

Jessica: We want it all open. Air it out!

Meg: Oh, one more thing about Mortimers.

Jessica: Yes.

Meg: My mother. The reason why she wanted us to do the story is because this great book has just come out called Mortimers a Moment in Time. I mean, just come out. And she was particularly interested in it because her college friend I think it's her college friend Mary Hilliard did all the photographs, and they are gorgeous. I've been looking at them online.

Jessica: I love it.

Meg: I know. Now I totally do have to get a copy of it. I've got so many coffee table books now because of subjects that we've done on this podcast, and I get, like, obsessed with them for a week or so.

Jessica: Do we have any idea who published that?

Meg: No. We'll look it up and say it at the end of the podcast.

Jessica: I think we should start getting review copies of things. I think I'm going to reach out to some publicity department. Okay.

Meg: Are you ready for your engagement question?

Jessica: as ever.

Meg: It’s interesting because I thought about a few different things to ask you and I think I've landed on you went to a coed school?

Jessica: prior to Nightingale. Yes.

Meg: Prior to Nightingale. When you moved to a single sex school, can you think of something that stood out to you, what a big difference was…

Jessica: A bag of dicks..haha…just kidding

Meg: in your twelve year old self thought that?

Jessica: definitely not what stood out to me. Well, there were a lot of different changes. And the uniform, I went you know from wearing normal clothes to wearing a uniform, and that was kind of weird. But the all

Meg: Yeah, just how all girl education. All girl education.

Jessica: All girl education

Jessica: When I went from Fleming to Nightingale, I was still a kid and dating and all of that wasn't happening. So I just went from a very, very familiar group of people to an unfamiliar group of people, and I was the only new girl in 8th grade. So there was so much that was new and so much going on that being able to pull out specifically that it's the single sex education is too difficult. It didn't hit me that I had a different experience as a single sex educated person until I got to college.

Meg: Okay.

Jessica: um When I realized that the other young women like me who had gone to single sex schools were the only ones who really were outspoken the first year of college. The other thing is that I was never uncomfortable around boys, and I think that some girls in our class or you know single sex Nightingale, Spence, barely Chapin girls if they weren't in a dating scene, They were just totally removed from that socialization. So that wasn't something that was ever awkward. Does that make sense?

Meg: I think so.

Jessica: Is it what you were even remotely what you were looking for?

Meg: Sure. I mean, they're open ended questions. It's engagement. I just want you to be engaged. Yeah, we're talking about gender stuff today.

Jessica: Yes. Well, I was also lucky like you were. I had an older brother at Collegiate and John's friends, I had a lot of access to, and they were very nice to me, as Dorfman's little sister.

Meg: All right, well, today my sources are Moma.org, New York Times from 1984, 1985, Tate.org, and getty.edu. It's somewhat of a continuation of last Week'S episode.

Jessica: when I heard Tate. I'm thinking art.

Meg: Yes.

Jessica: Okay.

Meg: On June 14, 1984, 400 demonstrators marched in front of the entrance to the Museum of Modern Arts newly expanded 53rd street building, right off Fifth Avenue. The demonstrators marched in front of the museum wearing shorts and T shirts in the suffragette colors, yellow and white, and held signs saying Let MoMA Know. Which I think was like a Captain and Tennille song, like Let Momma Know. I'm not sure what they were trying to get at. And MoMA doesn't know best. I feel like they were trying to do a play on words, and I couldn't figure out what the play on words was.

Jessica: It sounds like mama.

Meg: Yeah, right. The previous month, MoMA had opened the much anticipated exhibition, an international survey of recent painting and sculpture. Two floors of the newly renovated museum held 195 works by 165 artists from 17 countries.

Jessica: Were they all male?

Meg: How did you know?

Jessica: Cuz I had the smarts in my head. Okay.

Meg: Quote, the show is a sign of hope. It is a sign that contemporary art is being taken as seriously as it should be, said Kynaston McShine, the curator of the exhibit, who felt living artists were not being given their due. McShine added that any artist who wasn't in the show, quote, should rethink his career.

Jessica: Well, that's a dick move.

Meg: Of the 165 artists represented, all of whom established their reputations after 1975, only 13 were women. Which gets us back to the demonstrators, who, while their numbers were impressive and their message important, did not have the impact they were going for. The museum dismissed them as a minor nuisance, and New Yorkers flocked to the exhibit. The press barely noticed the controversy, but undeterred a small group of women artists who had experienced the ineffectiveness of the traditional demonstration with its signs and police barricades. You know, the way you're supposed to do it, Walk in a circle. They came up with a new way to deliver their message. They formed an anonymous collective called the Guerilla Girls. The Guerilla Girls, a group of feminist female artists hit the streets of New York wearing gorilla masks

Jessica: oh, I remember this!

Meg: And sticking posters with bold graphics and shocking statistics all over Soho and the East Village. One of their first posters asked, what did these artists have in common? They allow their work to be shown in galleries that show no more than 10% women or none at all. And these posters listed 52 living male artists by name, including Keith Herring, jean Michel Basquiat, Roy Lichtenstein, and Chuck Close, just to name a few.

Jessica: Wow.

Meg: So called them out by name.

Jessica: Wow.

Meg: The confrontational nature of the posters, coupled with their cold, hard facts and visual impact, made for extremely effective marketing. One of their early and most iconic posters proclaimed, “do women have to be naked to get into the Met museum?”

Jessica: Oh, I remember that.

Meg: Less than 5% of the artists in the modern art section are women, but 85% of nudes are female. Now, question that poster got an update in 2012, so how do you think those numbers just guess how did those numbers change in 27 years?

Jessica: Wait, give me the numbers again.

Meg: um Less than 5% of artists in the modern art section are women. What do you think it was in 2012?

Jessica: Somewhere around 10%.

Meg: Less than 4% of the artists

Jessica: It went down?!

Meg: And how about this? 85% of the nudes are female. What do you think it was in 2012.

Jessica: If it's 100%, I'm going to have a nervous breakdown.

Meg: That did go down 76% of the nudes. Okay, but in 27 years, I mean, that's just, like, a completely negligible change.

Jessica: Well, who were and are the curators?

Meg: Kynaston McShine.

Jessica: McShine, yeah, well, hmm.

Meg: If the curators are white men, if those are the guys with the job,

Jessica: and the donors are…

Meg: actually yeah, and actually, Kynaston McShine is not white, but he is a man.

Jessica: Well, has one strike against him.

Meg: So the Guerrilla Girls membership fluctuates from a few to as many as 30. They go by the names of dead female artists like Frida Kahlo and Alice Neal. The Anonymity keeps the attention on their message. Quote mainly we wanted the focus to be on the issues, not on our personalities or our own work. And think about it. If you don't know who they are, you can't really target them for being bitter or being it's like, what are you going to say? You can't say something misogynist and sliding about someone if you don't even know who they are.

Jessica: Well, you can, just say something misogynist, but it's hollow.

Meg: You need the specifics.

Jessica: Yes. You need the dirt.

Meg: Also, at the time of their inception, they felt it was necessary to avoid retribution, so they also were like, I'd rather these guys not boycott my work. All of them were working artists, and they didn't need angry curators and collectors getting mad at them. And as for the masks, quote, we were gorillas before we were gorillas. From the beginning, the press wanted publicity photos. We needed a disguise. No one remembers for sure how we got our fur, but one story is that at an early meeting, an original girl, a bad speller, wrote gorilla instead of gorilla. It was an enlightened mistake. It gave us our mask-ulinity. Ha ha. anonymous free speech is protected by the Constitution. You'd be surprised by what comes out of your mouth when you wear a mask. I kind of love that.

Jessica: There's an Oscar Wilde quote about that, which I will dig up during our break.

Meg: By the late 70s, feminists had been branded as manhating, strident, and humorless, making it easy to dismiss them. The Guerilla Girls used playfulness and satire to deliver their chilling and often shocking facts, and they weren't scared to offend men. On their poster, well hung at the Whitney, they exposed that while museums claimed that their acquisition policies reflected a meritocracy. Money and personal relationships were actually behind it all.

Jessica: Not surprising again.

Meg: but I guess for me it is a little bit, because I think it took me a long time to realize that what I was seeing was a filter, that you read the best books, but you don't know how the best books supposedly best books came to you. I think it's very easy for people to not realize that, in fact, the best art isn't necessarily the best art. It's been picked.

Jessica: Well, sure, but I think that as New Yorkers, we are both aware of the fact that the art gallery scene has long been a popularity contest. And you know, who's got the money? Who's selling for the highest dollars?

Meg: Museums aren't supposed to work that way, but they do.

Jessica: But they do because it's the same world. And so, yes, that's it. I think that the gallery world, especially during that time, was known for being such a club that was pretty much focused on printing money. I mean, think of oh, God, what was his name? He had a whole, like, a workshop and he was churning out paintings. I'm going to look up his name. I can't remember. But it was the business of art becoming more and more transparent. Kostabi, Mark Kostabi is his name. And in fact, in 2018, there was an article about him in artsy.net Mark Kostabi is still hustling decades after 80s art stardom. So again, just underlining the theme that it's a hustle, sure.

Meg: I guess I'm getting back into my teenage self, and I didn't know anything about that. I was completely unaware. And if somebody told me, this is the best thing you've ever seen, I'd be like, okay, that makes sense. I thought I thought it was a meritocracy. I thought if you worked really hard, you could get somewhere.

Jessica: Well, I mean, think about the canon of great literature.

Meg: Exactly.

Jessica: It's the exact same thing.

Meg: That's what I'm trying to say. Yeah. What is being provided to us is being presented as the best and definitive, the canon, when in fact, it's been filtered. And in fact, like, if a wealthy board member or a donor is willing to contribute money or a wing, not only will his taste be represented, but also the value of the art that he appreciates will increase.

Jessica: Correct.

Meg: Nick, of course, can totally help us with all of this.

Jessica: Oh, gosh, are we going to have to have him as the third leg of this group?

Meg: One poster stated quite bluntly, when racism and sexism are no longer fashionable, what will your art collection be worth? In addition to their weenie counts that's what they call them, they also draw attention to racial discrimination. Stated on the we sell White bread posters and stickers that they slap on offending galleries. Quote, “contains less than the minimum daily requirement of white women and nonwhites.” Clever.

Jessica: Very good.

Meg: In 1986, quote, “only four commercial galleries in New York show black women. Only one shows more than one.” In 2022, Their posters are considered both art and an important part of art history. They're hanging in the most respected galleries, and collectors pay a lot of money for originals. So now they're part the gorilla were.

Jessica: Yeah.

Meg: yeah, they're part of the establishment. But their mission is ongoing. The art world is still way to quote, “male pale stale and Yale.” I thought that was very cool.

Jessica: I love that.

Meg: They're very, very smart ladies. And fortunately, they still walk amongst us fighting discrimination. With facts, humor, and fake fur.

Jessica: Brava.

Meg: 1985. Advantages of being a woman artist

Jessica: and then a blank…

Meg: No No, they have some working without the pressure of success. Knowing your career might pick up after you're 80. Seeing your ideas live on in the work of others. Having the opportunity to choose between career and motherhood. Not having to undergo the embarrassment of being called a genius.

Jessica: Wow.

Meg: Those are my favorite.

Jessica: That is pretty good.

Meg: We were talking a little bit about wall labels last week.

Jessica: Oh, yes.

Meg: This is from one of their posters. Three ways to write a museum wall label when the artist is a sexual predator. And they give a couple of examples of how people actually did write a wall label for Chuck Close, and then this is what they suggest instead. Chuck Close has had a huge career with prices to match. He has been accused of sexually abusing models and students he picked up at fancy art schools. How fitting and ironic that he painted the official portrait of Bill Clinton. The art world tolerates abuse because it believes art is above it all and rules don't apply to genius white male artists. Wrong.

Jessica: I don't think you can comment on that. It's so definitive. That's it.

Meg: But, yeah, I mean, to your point, last week, you're like, don't take the art away. Just change the wall label. That's how they would change the wall label.

Jessica: And I think that it's valid.

Meg: Have you ever done anything anonymously?

Jessica: Me? Yeah.

Meg: This whole idea of the power of the mask. Have I ever written anything anonymously? Published anything anonymously? Does this include, like, bathroom walls?

Jessica: No, I don't think I have. I think I'm too egocentric.

Meg: The other thing that I was thinking about when I was thinking about engaging you was the idea of being part of, like, a girl group. Whether it's like, maybe it's a band or a book club or just a group of friends who meet regularly, a bridge club, I don't know. Have you ever been part of the power of women together doing something?

Jessica: I was in Glee Club with you.

Meg: Oh, that's right. There you go.

Jessica: Other than that, no. I think it's because I come from such a privileged position with so many genuine girlfriends because of our high school that I never found the need to find my tribe elsewhere. I had my all female…

Meg: Right like people do, sororities.

Jessica: exactly. I didn't want that. And honestly, I found a lot of the women who I was meeting at that age, college age and in my early 20s, just not to be of the same caliber as my Nightingale girls. And they were still, like, infighting over boys and crap like that. And I was just like, what's the point? So, no, I never, ever looked for that.

Meg: I think we should make stickers.

Jessica: What kind?

Meg: Well, the Guerilla Girls stuck stickers all over the place. We haven't done, like, stickers or posters we should do that.

Jessica: Yeah, we have to come up with something super clever and outrageous. Yeah.

Jessica: Can't we just stick up a picture of like, a boob? Isn't that like enough? Can we just be like, here tits. Woo!

Meg: All right, first we have to have a club.

Jessica: A mic and a Boob. That's what our new logo is going to be. I was trying to remember that Oscar Wild quote.

Meg: Okay.

Jessica: And you said anonymity allowed them to speak their minds more clearly. And because I'm becoming addled day by day, more and more addled. I couldn't remember the quote perfectly, but it sprang to mind. And here's what it is. Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he will tell you the truth.

Meg: Whoa. Very interesting.

Jessica: Hello Meg

Meg: Hello

Jessica: We return

Meg: we are back.

Jessica: I have an engagement question for you.

Meg: Okay

Jessica: ready?

Meg: I am

Jessica: In New York City. What do you think inspires or creates urban renewal?

Meg: Oh, define urban renewal for me.

Jessica: Well, when an area of the city is pretty down and out and then it gets a boost, like,

Meg: Oh, what causes that boost?

Jessica: Exactly.

Meg: Oh, gosh.

Jessica: Well, I will put you out of your misery.

Meg: Okay. I'm sorry. Coming up try.

Jessica: There was an interesting situation that happened in the mid 80s that brought a big part of Manhattan life back to life.

Meg: Okay.

Jessica: In my mind, whenever there's urban renewal, it's usually, I think, because housing development happens, developers come in and they're like, oh, this is really cheap and things are messed up and we can buy this for a song and build on the spot. And New York is such a real estate driven company because it's so rare, there's so little of it. Or sometimes you'll see like in Hudson, New York, which is really a shithole, let's be honest. And a lot of gay men and women started moving into that area and juged it right the hell up.

Meg: Very pleasant.

Jessica: It is one of the most delightful areas. So you can have a group that just decides, this is an inexpensive area. We want to make this our home and that's it. But in New York City in the mid 80s, there was an unusual reason that there was a bit of not a bit of lasting urban renewal, a little bit of history. Union Square was not always Union Square. It was built over a long period of time, starting in the very late 1700's, as the streets were going down, being laid out, the city was laid out, and by 1831, it was built up and funded by the city to be an incredibly fashionable place to live. So I don't know if you know, on Broadway and University, there are all of these, and on the side streets there are some remnants of really beautiful mansions.

Meg: Yeah, that's the Gold Coast.

Jessica: Yes. And that's what that area was for. And then at around in the mid 1800’s, mid to late 1870s, it became commercial. And this is sort of a good snapshot of how areas in New York degrade. So it went from being highly coveted residential space with these beautiful structures to being for commerce.

Meg: Okay.

Jessica: And the companies that went into that area were Tiffany and Company and Gorham Silver and lots of high end stuff.

Meg: Where are we now? In Union Square? Okay.

Jessica: And by around 1905, Tiffany moved. Everything was out, but in the late, late 1800’s, the area went from and this is the slide. You go from high residential to retail to entertainment. And so you had theaters, and we had talked about this at one other point, like the the Pleasure Gardens.

Meg: Yeah.

Jessica: Stuff like that was in that area. Mind you, when I say in that area, it was all around the park.

Meg: Okay.

Jessica: And the park the area that is Union Square doesn't mean just the park. It is 14th street to 17th street, Madison to Broadway. And it was originally called Union Square, by the way, because I always thought that it was like the labor unions and that they must have been having some protests there. But no. When the city was being laid out, there was an awkward parcel of land. One of the avenues had to turn in a peculiar way, and it made an intersection that was the union of two streets.

Meg: Oh, right. How clinical?

Jessica: Didn't know. Anyway, and the park there was designed by, again, Olmstead, who did Central Park and Prospect Park in Brooklyn. So it slid down with the entertainment people, as one does. Not only was it the theaters, but it was like costumers and the wig trade. And it's funny enough, you can still find wig sellers on 14th street as they left, because Broadway became Broadway uptown. No one wanted to go to the theater downtown anymore. It was certainly not for people of any wealth. All of those buildings got broken up into tenements and cheap housing, and then they became by the 70’s and 80’s shooting galleries and…

Meg: Union Square was scary.

Jessica: It was scary. What do you remember of Union Square when we were kids and teenagers?

Meg: Well, I don't think I ever went, but I do remember the lore the lore of crackheads, that it was where people went to just get stoned or OD.

Jessica: That was my memory as well. I just remember it being like because…It’s kind of big. I don't know if there were trees there in the 80s, but there are trees there now. And if it wasn't safe, you wouldn't walk across it.

Jessica: No, there is a transverse in the middle of the park that goes.

Meg: I Can imagine that being incredibly dangerous, terrifying. People are going to jump out at you. There are lots of ways to jump.

Jessica: Out at you, for sure.

Meg: And prostitution.

Jessica: Yes,

Meg: I remember that, too. Why do I remember that? I don't know why, but I do.

Jessica: Because it was shocking to see. I don't know why this is, but I guess I have seen enough dirty old men, but to see an actual, like, a woman in that scenario was really scary. It was against everything that you imagined. You understood, at least for me. I told you the story about the flasher who came after me in the wheelchair.

Meg: Yes. Did you tell our listeners?

Jessica: I don't know if I have. We'll have to check.

Meg: Okay.

Jessica: I don't think I did.

Meg: I don't think you did.

Jessica: Okay. So here's an example of things that were shocking, but prostitutes were more shocking. And this tells you how shocking prostitutes were for us. I must have been around twelve, something like that, and walking around on my own, going to school, whatever, as one did at the time. And there was a movie theater on 86th street between Lex and Third. I remember that was the movie theater where I hope that Mahnaz is listening to this so she can set me straight if I'm wrong, but that we played hooky to go see Christopher Atkins in One Night in Heaven at that movie theater on 86th street. And we probably didn't skip a class. It was probably like a study hall, like end of day study hall. But anyway, so I was walking past that theater, which, like a lot of old fashioned theaters, had the ticket booth and then sort of a recess..

Meg: right.

Jessica: I had not grown the eyes in the back of my head yet. So as I was prancing on 86th street going west towards Madison Avenue, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that there's something in that recess. And so I'm like, skipping by, like, yee tee tee yee tee tee. And I look over and I would say an older man, he was probably our age.

Meg: Oh, God.

Jessica: But quite in quite a state of disrepair, so there's no way to tell what it was. And I tipped my hat to him for really adhering to tradition because he was wearing a trench coat.

Meg: Wow, Good for him.

Jessica: And he was sitting in a wheelchair, and he had his eyes on me as I walked all the way up the block. And by the time I got to him, I realized there was some hand motion underneath the coat. And I was like, well, this is not what I would normally see here. And whoosh! then the coat was opened.

Meg: What is it about flashers? Why are they doing that? Do you know how many times I was flashed as a kid? I can't even count.

Jessica: I don't know what it I mean, obviously it's an attention grabber.

Meg: I don't understand the psychology of it, and I don't know if it happens anymore. Do people get flashed?

Jessica: I don't know. Listeners, please let us know. But what was great about this guy was that I freaked out. And of course, because we were raised in a certain era, I was like, oh, I can't do this. Too obviously or I'll be rude to the flasher.

Meg: Honey, I want to give you a hug right now.

Jessica: And so I was like doing that weird fast walk where you're like stiff legs. Like I gotta moving, I'm moving. Do you ever watch Bob's Burgers?

Meg: Yeah.

Jessica: Okay. So I was Tina. I was totally like okay. And I look over my left shoulder and he is wheeling behind me and I'm like what the fuck? And this guy's like whatever the sound of wheels is this an audible noise that I'm in the wheeled desk chair and I just see like he's got like this perverted grin and he's just wheeling. And of course there's no way he could have caught up to me. But in that moment of panic.

Meg: It’s scary!

Jessica: It was like having a mac truck bearing down on me in the shape of a trench coat. Mercifully I don't remember what anything under the coat looked like. I don't have that burned into my memory.

Meg: This is one of our more outrageous digressions from Union Square too.

Jessica: No, not even at Union Square unions we're talking about prostitutes. And that that guy in the wheelchair was more terrible, was less terrifying to me than a prostitute. Because that was the ultimate transgression. Because you're a woman. Anyway, so there we are back in the early mid 80's in Union Square Park, where needles galore and junkies and muggings and God knows what else. And a 27 year old guy had an idea. And not unlike these days, this 27 year old guy got funding for an idea. But his idea changed Union Square and it changed America.

Meg: What?

Jessica: And that was Danny Meyer’s Union Square Cafe.

Meg: Danny Meyer. I love him.

Jessica: Why do you love him so very much?

Meg: Because he is the king of hospitality. His restaurants are a joy to go to. You feel like you are a member of the family.

Jessica: Well, he saved Union Square by gentrifying it as more and more people flocked to this fledgling restaurant that was doing this thing that no one else had really done. New American cuisine. What was it? It was high end food in a relaxed but not shabby atmosphere. And as people flocked there in exactly a reverse of the downgrading of Union Square, more and more people with more and more money were coming into the area. More restaurants came in and then people started getting into the buildings and that whole area revived. And the reason I said that he is also responsible for changing the United States is that he really did create a menu with his first chef that changed the way America ate. The idea of elevated mac and cheese.

Meg: Yeah

Jessica: that’s Union Square Cafe. The idea of having fried chicken, not as just a picnic food. Danny Meyer. So that making truly American food and comfort food into high end restaurant dining was it started in Union Square, at the Union Square Cafe. So a tip. Of the hat to Danny Meyer.

Meg: I guess it was in the don't even know how many restaurants he had in the neighborhood. I know he always made it so he could walk from one restaurant to the other, and he wanted to get all the ingredients from the

Jessica: Union Square Green Market.

Meg: Yeah

Jessica: It is one of the best green markets in the city. Yeah, I thought that was sort of heartwarming and charming and a great example of sometimes you take a chance and something really great happens. And at that time, the city had decided that it had to put money into Union Square itself, the park, because it was so dangerous. So there was a grant, I think of around $50,000 to refurbish the area. So Danny Meyer must have been savvy enough to get in on that.

Meg: I'll tell you a good Danny Meyer restaurant story.

Jessica: Okay

Meg: So Gramercy Tavern, which is one of the best restaurants in the country

Jessica: they dined together multiple times.

Meg: Yeah. Alice, my daughter, is about two years old. Not really the ideal age to take a child to a fancy restaurant, but it was my father's birthday, and usually she was pretty good in a restaurant. They treated her like she was a princess. They brought out individual Alice sized amuse bouch for her.

Jessica: No

Meg: absolutely. They treated her like she was a member of the family. Like I was saying before, I was like this, I'm coming back to this restaurant any and every time I can. And because they treated her, this two year old child, so well, she was happy as a clam, and we were happy as clams, and everyone around us thought everything was wonderful. It was just a completely different approach to how you treat your customers. I can't even describe it.

Jessica: No, you just reminded me of something funny. I remember being there with my family for a birthday or something at Union Square, not at Gramercy Tavern. There was a large round table of only men who were getting drunker and drunker and drunker and louder and louder and louder, and it was so obnoxious, but they were clearly dropping a ton of money. It was just bottle after bottle after bottle of whatever. It was so obnoxious that we just couldn't take it anymore. And the wait person just came to us and said, I can see that you're very unhappy with this, and what I'm going to do is I'm letting you know that we're going to do something about it, but I'm not going to walk right over to their table. So they don't think it's you who's saying anything, because it's not. It's me. I'm recognizing what's going on. She said, I'll take care of it. And about two minutes later, from a completely different direction, she sidles up to their table and tells them to behave. They all sat up straight. They stopped lounging, and they shut the hell up. So I agree with you that is a feeling of intuitive service that is unreal.

Meg: And I have a feeling that whatever the wait person said wasn't rude. I have a feeling that it was somehow hospitable and gave them the opportunity to behave better. Yeah, right.

Jessica: Because if they were drunk enough and enough men at one table, that if she had said something unpleasant, they would have dug their heels in.

Meg: He wrote a book Danny Meyer did about hospitality. It might even be called Hospitality, but we should look it up.

Jessica: Interesting.

Meg: And it's all about just the way that he thinks about restaurants. He also started, and I'm not sure that it took off so well, but he is not a huge fan of tipping. He would rather pay everybody a wage and not have people tip. The problem with that is that when you look at the prices on the menu, you're like, Holy crap. Because then your bill is much higher, but you're not factoring in the fact that you don't have to put 20% on that. Anyway, he tried really, really hard at a lot of his restaurants, and I don't know if it really took off, but it's smart, and it would change this whole tipping system that's so whack grotesque. It's not great. And you've worked in the food industry?

Jessica: No, I worked for one day.

Meg: Oh, right. Well, I worked in the food industry, and being paid through tips sucks.

Jessica: Yeah. Not for me. I don't think I would get a lot of tips. It would depend on how I felt that day more than my ability to actually grin and bear it.

Meg: And usually it has nothing to do with how good you are at your job. It has to do with how generous the person is, which shouldn't have anything to do with how much..

Jessica: you get paid…

Meg: much you get paid for the very good job that you're doing.

Jessica: Yeah, indeed. The other thing that doing this little bit of research made me think of is I looked at my bookshelves and I realized I don't own the Union Square Cafe cookbook, which is insane.

Meg: We do have a book list.

Jessica: We do. We should publish any publisher who's listening. We are now putting out the call. Send us review copies.

Meg: So the Danny Meyer book is Setting the Table the Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business.

Jessica: Love it.

Meg: Yes.

Jessica: I'm sure it's applicable to far more than just the hospitality industry, quite frankly.

Meg: I think it's just a way of thinking about how you run a business and how you give a service

Jessica: thoughtfully.

Meg: Right. Very outside the box thinking.

Jessica: So, speaking of outside the box thinking, can you identify a link between our segments?

Meg: I mean, they were both very creative. They saw a problem. Guerilla Girls and Danny Meyer.

Jessica: Do you think that it's possible that the Guerilla Girls had their posters up in the Union Square area? That's a downside.

Meg: I'm sure they did.

Jessica: Of course they did. Fabulous. Okay, this might be a little more esoteric, but the Guerilla Girls were looking for recognition and hospitality. Not hospitality. Recognition and inclusion and being treated well. And that is the core of hospitality.

Meg: Very well done, Just. I am impressed. Thank you.

Jessica: Thank you very much.

Meg: As Always.