[00:16] Meg: Welcome to Desperately Seeking the '80s. I am Meg.

[00:20] Jessica: And I am Jessica and Meg and I have been friends since 1982. We got through middle school and high school together here in New York City where we still live.

[00:28] Meg: And where we podcast about New York City in the '80s. I do ripped from the headlines.

[00:34] Jessica: And I do pop culture.

[00:36] Meg: Jessica, I heard from Richard Grayson.

[00:39] Jessica: Shut up.

[00:41] Meg: Nope, I will not shut up.

[00:42] Jessica: You have been sitting on this.

[00:43] Meg: Yes.

[00:44] Jessica: I am now dead. Okay, hit it.

[00:50] Meg: Hi, Meg. Thanks so much for alerting me to the podcast. It has a lot of episodes that I'm going to listen to because, well, I'm really interested in the subject matter, and you and Jessica are fun to listen to. To be honest, I delayed listening to it because I was afraid it would be really embarrassing, but it wasn't. And you said really nice things. And then he goes on a little bit about like, oh, did you find me this way or that way? And then he says, P.S. -I don't think I ever had social anxiety disorder. I am not shy and was always able to express myself in public without any fear of embarrassing myself. Just the opposite. I had another DSM diagnosis that didn't exist back in 1966 when at 15, I asked my parents to let me see a psychiatrist. Panic disorder.

[01:40] Jessica: I hear you.

[01:42] Meg: I became agoraphobic because I had panic attacks. Traditional talk therapy with a psychiatrist who got his M.D. From NYU didn't help with the panic attacks, although it helped in a lot of other ways. And I only started to get better after my mother insisted he prescribe something in 1969, after I'd been in the house for months with the panic attacks getting worse, after about six weeks of taking the drug Triavil, a combination of tricyclic antidepressant and a tranquilizer, I started feeling better going out and started college. I now think panic disorder has a genetic basis, which is why I asked to see the psychiatrist who'd help my aunt. I used to get panic attacks in class, which is why I didn't want to go to college. Figures I'd be a college professor for 40 years, right? All right, so isn't that cool?

[02:37] Jessica: That is the most wonderful thing. I'm so happy that he reached out. Hi, Richard.

[02:42] Meg: And we've had another back and forth. He wrote something about Hands Across America. Yes. That I'm going to post because it's hysterical. So you have to go to instagram to check that out. And what else? Oh, there was something else that he did that I wanted to share with you. Oh, my God. His friend Denis was a lawyer, and he defended Daniel Rakowitz from Tompkins Square.

[03:06] Jessica: Eat him up in Tompkins Square.

[03:08] Meg: And he stopped being an attorney and opened the Kraine Theater and KGB Bar.

[03:13] Jessica: That is crazy.

[03:15] Meg: Which is where Alice goes. She goes and hangs at KGB Bar.

[03:19] Jessica: And I think that our high school english teacher was published in the KGB Reader.

[03:27] Meg: Who

[03:28] Jessica: Mrs. Scott.

[03:29] Meg: Ah, yep I wouldn't be surprised at. So anyway, that's a just, I'm so.

[03:37] Jessica: Happy that you reached out to him to tell him and what a lovely encounter. And also, hey, great public service announcement about mental health, hygiene, and all of that stuff, right?

[03:53] Meg: And I asked him if I could read what he said, because I want to get things right. And he also said, thanks again, it meant a lot to me, and I'm grateful for your interest and kind words.

[04:03] Jessica: I love that.

[04:04] Meg: It kind of made my week.

[04:06] Jessica: Well, his diary entries made my week last week.

[04:11] Meg: I think we're going to keep on digging in. I think he might be sort of like Alex. It's like a blog, except it happened a long time ago, so it's like a time capsule.

[04:21] Jessica: Yeah, no, he's an amazing resource, and I hope that we can continue to actually speak to him in person and not just have to read his diaries to get info. And this is actually what I mean, I can't say that I would have ever articulated that this was a hope of mine for this podcast, but just this conversation. And not only conversations with other New Yorkers or people who appreciate New York, but this is a conversation that is now echoing through the ages. This is like the history of New York coming to life.

[04:56] Jessica: I love it.

[05:09] Meg: My engagement question.

[05:10] Jessica: Oh, I'm so excited.

[05:12] Meg: Is challenging.

[05:13] Jessica: I'm less excited.

[05:14] Meg: I want you to tell me again, and our listeners for the first time, what happened to you on the subway last week.

[05:24] Jessica: Oh, terrible. Okay, but also nice, right? Tell us. I was taking the 6 train uptown from Stuyvesant town, so I was on the 6 train and I was busy congratulating myself for not taking a taxi and wasting money and marveling, as I do every time I'm on the subway, which is not that infrequently at wow, the subway really is the fastest way to get around town. There's no traffic. It took me an hour and a half several weeks ago to get to an event downtown because Biden was in town and the FDR was closed. So anyway, there I was on the subway feeling extremely happy about it. My stop is 96th. So prior to that is what, 86th, then 77th, then 68th, then 59th. So I was between 59th and 68th street stations, and the car stops and all of the power goes out. And the power didn't go out instantly. It waited a second, and everyone in the car was like, oh, shit. Yeah. And just because of their own, like, I need to go home.

[06:41] Meg: Yeah.

[06:41] Jessica: And I was sitting down at the seat next to the door, but one over next to an older woman who was very, very well dressed. She just looked kind of interesting. And I was like, oh, she looked kind of cool. She's wearing a mask. As some people were, some were not. As we were sitting there, people started to get restless. And after about five minutes, one of the operators on the subway car came out and said that someone was, and I quote, "an unauthorized person" was on the tracks and that we shouldn't worry because the train had not hit him. So everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Wow. And he was like, and we don't have the power on because we want the third rail to be off.

[07:26] Meg: It's so good that they let you know all that information instead of making you.

[07:32] Jessica: Which is rare.

[07:33] Meg: I would think so.

[07:34] Jessica: Do you know why? Because the PA system in my car was on the fritz. Okay. So they actually had to have a person come in, which they wouldn't normally have done anyway, but, yes, it was great. And then we're all just sitting there sweating, and I wind up striking up a conversation with the woman next to me. And she turns out to be fascinating. And her husband was one of the biggest italian art dealers in New York City and had galleries all over the world. And she described him as being, like, the great love of her life and that he was her second marriage, and that on her second date with him, he proposed. And she was like, this is a crazy person. And she wasn't planning to ever get married again. And they got married, and she's like, it was the most incredible thing. And he had died about a year ago, and she used to be a journalist, and she wrote his biography, and she was just telling me all of this amazing stuff. And we had this really warm, nice conversation. Back to being warm. We're all sweating in this dark. It's dim.

[08:44] Meg: Okay.

[08:45] Jessica: Then everyone from the, we were in the third car. The first and second car start moving backwards, and there's something on the PA. And all I can hear is like, fritzel, fritzel, fritzel, evacuate first car. And so as these people are coming back, we're all like, what's going on? What's going on? And the person had not been hit, but indeed had been electrocuted when he hit the tracks. So they were evacuating the first car so they could put the body on the car to have it go into the station first.

[09:21] Meg: Wow.

[09:21] Jessica: And they didn't want anyone on the second car because obviously that's too close for comfort. And if there needed to be any emergency services people, they'd have extra room. So that happened. The whole thing was maybe 2 hours. And then we finally coasted into the 68th street station. And everyone was very grim and silent. And what was really interesting to me was that even before we knew that the person had died, not a single person acted out on the subway car. Everyone was really nice to each other. People made room so that people could sit on their bags on the floor. People were being solicitous, like they were chatting with other people. No one was complaining or bitching or yelling, which frequently happens. It was so civilized. And when we got into the 68th street station, there was no more service, there was no catching another train. And so this procession, this mob of people just started moving up Lexington Avenue together. Oh, wow. Which, it must have been a very weird sight for other people. But when I got out of the subway, the older woman was, we were still sort of chatting and we exchanged information and we are having cocktails at her apartment on Park Avenue this week. How lovely is that right?

[10:49] Meg: Jessica, lovely New York story.

[10:50] Jessica: It is. She is a journalist. I was telling her about know my world in writing and producing know women in arts. And it was delightful, you know New York. Very New York story in my very, very bad and the very, very good. And people having to deal with each other in incredibly close quarters.

[11:12] Meg: Okay, that's a wonderful lead in.

[11:15] Jessica: So that wasn't really an engagement, was that?

[11:18] Meg: That was the engagement question. Because you inspired me to look up two stories that happen in the '80s.

[11:26] Jessica: Fabulous.

[11:27] Meg: The first one is grim, but hold on, because there's a second one.

[11:32] Jessica: Excellent. I am very invested in.

[11:36] Meg: My sources for today, The New York Times all over the place, and New York Magazine. Early Friday morning, June 26, 1981, 26 year old Gerard Coury took the train from his small hometown of Torrington, Connecticut, headed to Washington, DC. He had been an honors student in high school, but had dropped out of Fairfield University after three years. He was hoping to get a job waiting tables in D.C.. Apparently Torrington, Connecticut at the time was kind of bleak. So good to get out. Got it. But he never made it. Police in Grand Central Terminal picked him up Friday evening wearing only pants. He said he'd been mugged and the assailants had taken his clothes as well as his suitcase and money. At 07:00 P.M. he called home and said, "mom, help me get out of here." His mom said to stay put and she'd find a friend to come pick him up.

[12:37] Jessica: Was he in the police precinct?

[12:39] Meg: No. In Grand Central Terminal they have an area. Conrail workers. Conrail is a predecessor to Amtrak. Gave him a t-shirt to wear and sat him on a bench. But at around 11:00 P.M., so that's 4 hours later, Gerry got up and left the Conrail police office, saying that relatives were meeting him. 6 hours later, at 05:20 a.m. There was another sighting of Gerry. Ten blocks away from Grand Central at Times Square, a group of 15 youths surrounded him. It is unclear if the kids stripped him of his clothes or if he was already naked of his own volition. But when he broke out of the group running across 42nd Street, he was entirely in the nude. The mob chased him, jeering at him and throwing bottles and cans. He ran into the subway station at 8th Avenue, jumped the turnstile, and was stopped by two transit police. He didn't say a word to them, but struggled with them and broke free, jumping onto the tracks with the crowd at his heels, laughing and throwing stuff. Witnesses say they watched Gerry grab the third rail and flip backwards. Then he got up, took six deep breaths, and grabbed it again. This time he collapsed. His autopsy showed no drugs or alcohol were in his system. And shockingly, the medical examiner said he didn't die from electrocution. His cause of death was listed as a heart attack due to fright. How crazy is this?

[14:29] Jessica: I have 8 million questions.

[14:31] Meg: Okay, so what the fuck happened, right? Many at the time, this was national news because this is 1981, New York fear City. This is evidence that New York is just a cesspool of horrible people. Right? So many at the time used this horrible story to pillory New York, the heartless and cruel city that housed such deranged people who would strip a young man naked and chase him to his death, laughing at him the whole time. Quote, this is from an opinion piece in the Times. Quote, "the mob of underdogs who acted like uncontrolled animals, nameless punks who live on trash and broken homes."

[15:19] Jessica: Although a hideous description. Really good writing. Sorry. Yeah, it is, but wow.

[15:27] Meg: Right? And there were many witnesses to the callousness of the mob.

[15:32] Jessica: Really?

[15:32] Meg: Yeah. Oh, it was very public, but that wasn't the whole story. What eventually emerged was that Gerry had been behaving erratically for a few years.

[15:43] Jessica: Well, I was just going to say, forgive me for interrupting, but you don't get naked twice in one night without, I think, I mean, no matter how weird New York is, I don't think that you're going to have the same issues.

[16:01] Meg: Like someone really wants your underwear. That badly. Unlikely.

[16:08] Jessica: Sorry. It's true. Unlikely.

[16:11] Meg: But the fact is all of this background wasn't really spoken about at first. Everyone just came down really hard on New York, which deserved it. Absolutely. But it was a more complicated story. A former friend from high school said, quote, "he got to be cynical about the state of the world. Bitter. He said it was a dog eat dog place, like when Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner had to withdraw from the Olympics and everyone was sad and disappointed, Gerry said, I'm glad they can't compete. This country is always making heroes over nothing." He used to be very outgoing, an optimistic sort of guy, but he got distant and sort of depressed in the last two or three years. His dean at Fairfield University described him as a disturbed boy. That's strong language.

[17:02] Jessica: That is very strong language.

[17:05] Meg: He had trouble choosing his curriculum. He wanted, quote, "relevant courses." And apparently he got over involved in the issues of other students. He, quote, "identified with other people's problems." I feel like this is all sort of code for schizophrenia. I don't know. Bipolar?

[17:22] Jessica: Yeah. I mean, it reminds me of is that there was a kid at Kenyon College when I was there, he was. So this is in the '80s maybe, I guess a year ahead of me who was sort of like, oh, the quirky kid and was embraced by the "hippie types." I say hippie in quotes because they all had jaguars or something, but those kinds of kids. And they were sweet to him, they were on his side, but it became very evident that he was schizophrenic. And even at that times, we're talking about the '80s right now. No one just said, hey, this guy is schizophrenic and needs to not be on campus. And I remember I was telling my brother that he was like a known figure and it's not a huge school by any means, but still you couldn't miss him ever. And I remember saying to my know, I think literally he high fived a building and I was like, John, what do we make of this? And as we were tittering and we were just like, there's something radically wrong and why is no one saying anything? And then years later, someone from Kenyon, I think they were in the Pacific Northwest, I can't recall, but saw him living on the street and he had been one of the hippies, this guy, and sort of reembraced him and helped him in whatever way that he could, but that's, I think, a very typical thing with young men. And there is a great book by Kurt Vonnegut's son about being that age, which is the common age when schizophrenia hits. He was tripping on acid in the same moment in a boat in the middle of a lake when he had his schizophrenic break. And I was like, how do you ever come back from that?

[19:23] Meg: No. And what you're describing, I can think of quite a few examples myself. Not just things that I've experienced personally, but stories that people have told. The dean had suggested he seek psychological counseling. It is unclear if he ever did. So the death of Gerard Coury, who had earned the title's hardest worker and most influential in his high school yearbook, remains a mystery. His brother told the Times, quote, "whether or not after being accosted, beaten, stripped, and abandoned in New York City, he was in control of his faculties. I could not say. I certainly would have freaked out after that." Ready for story number 2?

[20:08] Jessica: Can I lie down for a second? It's just so sad and so grim. I mean, could you imagine being naked on the streets of New York and being chased? And being chased? I can't think of anything that would bring on a psychotic break more than that.

[20:30] Meg: Right.

[20:31] Jessica: I'm ready for number two. Okay.

[20:33] Meg: Much happier ending.

[20:34] Jessica: Oh, please.

[20:36] Meg: On Thursday, June 7, 1979, 17 year old Renee Katz was late for school. She lived in Flushing, Queens and was on her way to the High School of Music and Art, which in the '70s, as we've discussed on this podcast, was on 135th Street and Convent Avenue. She was an acclaimed flautist and soprano and was days away from graduating. She was planning to attend the New England Conservatory of Music in the fall.

[21:05] Jessica: Nice.

[21:06] Meg: Renee was reading King Lear on the subway that morning. She fell asleep and missed the stop to transfer to the 1. So she exited the train and waited for the E to take her back one stop. While she was standing on the platform, someone pushed her onto the tracks in front of the oncoming train.

[21:26] Jessica: Jesus, Meg.

[21:27] Meg: She instinctually rolled to the left, and that's what saved her life. Unfortunately, it didn't save her hand. She was pinned between the train's second car and the platform overhang. By the way, you know there's an overhang. If for some horrible reason anybody finds themselves on the tracks, you can go underneath, like, basically where you stand to wait for the train.

[21:56] Jessica: Underneath it?

[21:57] Meg: Underneath it, there is a space. Go for the space. Her right hand was entirely severed. After Renee was whisked off to Bellevue, she remained conscious the whole time, crying out for her mother. Police found her hand and packed it in ice supplied by a nearby bar. The operation to reattach it began at 10:30 A.M. and took 16 hours and a twelve member surgical team. It was a success.

[22:24] Jessica: Oh, my God.

[22:25] Meg: But she was no longer able to play the flute professionally. Do you remember this story? I do. It was big friggin news. Maybe your parents shielded you from this.

[22:36] Jessica: I might have been shielded, yeah.

[22:38] Meg: Fortunately, she still had her voice.

[22:40] Jessica: I was just going to say she was also a soprano, so she had that.

[22:43] Meg: She has gone on to have a vibrant cabaret career here in New York, and I will post all about it.

[22:50] Jessica: Yay. Is she still performing?

[22:52] Meg: Yes, very much so. All right, quote, "I decided to focus not on what I lost, but what I was lucky enough to keep. And I decided to focus on my voice, my salvation. And I feel really blessed that I can sing." You might have a question about who pushed her.

[23:09] Jessica: Well, yes, if I can recover my senses, yes, I would like to know, although how frequently do we even find out who these lunatics are?

[23:22] Meg: Exactly. Because it's really easy to just like, disappear and move. Yeah. Push and move. Disappear in the mass of people. 26 year old Allen Curtis Lewis, a male clerk in the CBS mailroom on 51st Street who had a history of sexually based crimes, public lewdness and subjecting another person to sexual contact without the person's consent. Groping. I don't know. I don't know what that covers a lot of.

[23:50] Jessica: Yeah, it does.

[23:50] Meg: Right. Well, anyway, he was questioned after someone called a police tip line. Allen failed a polygraph and then he confessed to pushing Renee. The police said, we have reason to believe that he was particularly upset and frustrated on the day of the attack.

[24:09] Jessica: Do we know why?

[24:10] Meg: No.

[24:10] Jessica: Okay.

[24:11] Meg: The jury. And this is why I didn't do a deep dive on this. Because the jury deliberated for four days at his trial for attempted murder. They threatened a deadlock, but ultimately they found Allen Curtis Lewis not guilty. By reason of cuckoo? No. The jury concluded the police had coerced his confession and no one else has ever been arrested for the crime. Another mystery.

[24:35] Jessica: I think that the moral of this entire section of the podcast today is don't go in the subway.

[24:42] Meg: No. Do you want to hear some stats?

[24:45] Jessica: Yes, I do.

[24:47] Meg: Subway felonies and felonies are rape, murder, robbery. Subway felonies in 1981, 115,295. In 1997, 4,010. Interesting. And in 2022, 2,000, but that was up 30% from 2021. So we are experiencing an uptick. It is dangerous out there. When people say, oh, it's like the '80s. No

[25:20] Jessica: Not so much.

[25:21] Meg: It's not like the '80s, but everyone has an absolute right to recognize and respond to the fact that it's worse than it was in the last few years.

[25:30] Jessica: I think it's entirely reasonable to just have a no felony at all policy as an individual. Is there crime? Yes, there's crime. Is there more? Yes, there's more. Ergo, I'm frightened. That's fine.

[25:45] Meg: Yeah.

[25:45] Jessica: I think that trying to shame people out of being frightened is one of those. It is a weird kind of like, if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. If you're afraid of the subway, you're a wimp. No

[25:57] Meg: I mean, granted, the difference between 14,000 and 2,000 that's a big difference.

[26:04] Jessica: I mean it's massive, I'm just saying you can draw your own line about what is reasonable.

[26:09] Meg: Absolutley. Also, we do have an expectation of it being safe now, as we should. I mean, we should be allowed to travel safely around the city. That should be an expectation that we have.

[26:20] Jessica: Correct. And post Covid, there have been a lot of social ills and a lot of challenges for people who were most likely already on the edge, and economic problems and whatever.

[26:40] Meg: And mental illness, personal problems like.

[26:42] Jessica: Yes, that just push mental illness forward. When you said that this was a really famous case, and do I remember for some reason, what popped into my head was, do you remember? I think it was midtown. Like, there was a guy roaming around and going into the subways, hitting people in the head with a brick. That one.

[26:59] Meg: Was that in the '80s or more recently?

[27:03] Jessica: I can't, you know what, time has collapsed for me? I have no idea when anything happened, but I remember that there was like a guy who was crushing women's heads with a brick. It was so horrible. Fucking insane.

[27:19] Meg: It is interesting to me. I mean, okay, this guy was found not guilty and all that, so I'm not going to assume that he was guilty, but do I think that that was a sexually based crime? Yeah, I do. I think pushing a woman into the tracks is most probably out of some sort of sexual frustration.

[27:37] Jessica: She is an unbelievably lucky and smart young woman. And when you say instinctively rolled to the left.

[27:44] Meg: She didn't know about the overhang. Some sort of survival instinct kicked in. And she considers herself incredibly lucky.

[27:53] Jessica: I mean, she is incredibly lucky.

[27:55] Meg: And she had a nurse too, who was really good at coaching her through her recovery. And just saying, think about the things you can do every day just getting stronger and stronger.

[28:10] Jessica: Even though she couldn't play the flute, did she regain use of her hand?

[28:13] Meg: Yeah, she can play the piano.

[28:15] Jessica: Get out.

[28:16] Meg: Yeah, I mean, I don't know if it's concert quality.

[28:21] Jessica: But its cabaret quality. The fact that she can move her fingers, full stop is damned incredible. Can you imagine getting the hand, like, being the one, like, hi, I'm in a bar. Could I have a bag of ice for this hand? That's freakish.

[28:38] Meg: Yeah. And that's a good New York story. And now we get to post about her cabaret performances. Go Renee.

[28:45] Jessica: Yes. Well, we should attend one.

[28:47] Meg: Yeah.

[28:48] Jessica: Where does she play for the most part?

[28:49] Meg: Pangea. Don't Tell Mama.

[28:52] Jessica: Really nifty. Well, let's tell all our listeners.

[29:08] Meg: Exactly. So, Jessica, the guy who started KGB Bar and the Kraine Theater, which still is thriving in the east Village, is Dennis Woychuk.

[29:20] Jessica: All right.

[29:21] Meg: And he was the lawyer for the cannibal of Tompkins Square Park and his father was Ukrainian.

[29:28] Jessica: Well, that's a very Ukrainian area, as we know. So interesting.

[29:32] Meg: Yeah. And he decorated KGB Bar when he started it with all this stuff that he found, like, in the attic in that building.

[29:40] Jessica: Wow, that is very cool.

[29:41] Meg: Wild.

[29:42] Jessica: Interesting. I am going to give you an engagement question, which I rarely do. Have you ever been a fan of Spike Lee?

[29:50] Meg: I'll tell you. Yes. Short answer. Yes. I have.

[29:54] Jessica: Longer answer now. I'm dying.

[29:56] Meg: I was super annoyed with Spike Lee in the early '90s, okay. I lived on 7th Street.

[30:05] Jessica: Yes.

[30:06] Meg: And he was filming, and he shut down my block, and I couldn't get into my apartment for a while.

[30:14] Jessica: That is the most New Yorker answer that I could possibly have ever hoped for you to come up with.

[30:20] Meg: And I was really grumpy about it. I'm like, I'm going home.

[30:24] Jessica: Well, yes. You know who's the worst? Because who knows what the actual director is saying or doing? It's those freaking PAs. They're like, I have a headset on and a clipboard.

[30:37] Meg: Just 1 minute. Just 1 minute.

[30:41] Jessica: You are an NYU film student who needs to go away. Yes, I'm completely with you, but, yeah.

[30:50] Meg: I actually very much enjoy Spike Lee films.

[30:53] Jessica: When you think of Spike Lee, what is the movie you think of?

[30:58] Meg: Do the Right Thing.

[30:59] Jessica: Thank you. Okay, well, we're going to talk about Do the Right Thing.

[31:02] Meg: Oh, you know, we've kind of talked about it a little bit.

[31:03] Jessica: But we're going to take a different route today.

[31:07] Meg: Okay, I'm ready.

[31:09] Jessica: So for those of you who are not familiar Do the Right Thing was released in 1989. It is a Spike Lee Joint, and it starred Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, John Turturro, and Ruby De And John Savage.

[31:26] Meg: Yes. Wonderful cameo.

[31:27] Jessica: John Savage, our beloved from Hair. Definitely. And also The Deer Hunter. Interesting. Anyway, Spike Lee stars in it, and he plays Mookie, who is the delivery guy for Sal's Pizza. And the plot of the movie basically is it all takes place during a hot, hot day in Brooklyn. It's all, it's a mostly black neighborhood. So John Savage is like the white guy who sort of represents gentrification, who has a building there. And Sal, played by Danny Aiello, is sort of a holdout from when it was an Italian neighborhood, but he has the pizzeria there. During this hot, hot day, passions and tempers flare. And one of the main characters, Radio Raheem, you know, has a boombox. And my favorite line from the entire movie that John and I, my brother, frequently would repeat to one another is when he's trying to get the batteries for his boombox from the asian bodega owners. "What batteries do you want? D motherfucker D", it's my all time favorite. So Radio Raheem, on this horrible hot day there winds up being a fight, a fracus at Sal's Pizza, because, among other things, Sal only has Italian Americans on his wall of fame. And his black customers are like, why is there no one from our community here? And Sal says, because it's my wall. And cops show up, things go wrong. Radio Raheem is put in a chokehold, which is a move that we're very familiar with on this podcast, using his billy club, and he kills him, even though and the cop who does it, his partner, is horrified, but they bundle Radio Raheem's body into the back of the squad car, and they go off. And then the racial tensions in the neighborhood, which are played out throughout that whole day through Sal and Mookie and the other residents of the neighborhood, they then have to figure out how they're going to rebuild and move forward. Spike Lee dedicates the film to the families of victims of racial violence in New York City, including Michael Griffith, Michael Stewart. Michael Stewart, who we've talked about, Edmund Perry, Eleanor Bumpurs. Now, who is Michael Griffith? I thought I'd talk a little bit about what happened in Howard Beach.

[34:08] Meg: All right.

[34:09] Jessica: Howard Beach is in Queens and a primarily white neighborhood. A car with four black men in this car drive into Howard Beach. I think that one of the guys was going to get a paycheck, and the car broke down. They are immediately, the guys in the car are accosted by a white gang. They reached the New Park Pizzeria near the intersection of Cross Bay Boulevard and 157th. Another group of men, mostly teenagers, came out with bats and started to again, yelling racial slurs, beat the black men who were in, quote, "their neighborhood". They were beaten very, very badly and Griffith, he ran to the Belt Parkway, where he was struck by a car and killed. Mayor Ed Koch was properly horrified and said that this was a lynching. Al Sharpton and Minister Floyd Flake and activist Sonny Carson all urged boycotts of the pizzeria and a bunch of other businesses in the area where nothing was done to help these men. There were protests with black marchers who were coming into Howard Beach to protest what had happened, carrying signs that were equating what was going on in New York City to apartheid. And the white residents had signs that said, white power and bring back slavery.

[35:46] Meg: My God.

[35:46] Jessica: So it was incredibly horrible. Howard Beach was a flashpoint and really became a symbol of racial tension and outrageous bigotry in New York City. So that happened in 1986, and it wasn't until 1989 that Yusef Hawkins was killed. So this went on for quite some time, and so Do the Right Thing when it came out, I don't know if you remember this. From the minute that it was released, it was a very, very big deal, and it created the same kind of tension in theaters and in reviews and in just conversation that had actually been happening in Howard Beach. It was mimicking it. It was a fascinating cultural event unto itself. But what I think is really interesting, something happened really soon after Michael Griffith was killed and after Yusuf Hawkins was killed, we had our first black mayor. The new mayor was David Dinkins. He won, running against Ed Koch, who was trying.

[36:52] Meg: Basically, Ed Koch didn't respond very well to the Yusef Hawkins situation, and that gave David Dinkins a big boost.

[37:00] Jessica: As we also know from this podcast, the city had really been in this grip of poverty and crime and housing crisis that Ed Koch was really trying to address in his way. But things were still severely fucked up. And so David Dinkins was embraced, and black voters came out and actually were like, yes, let's get him into office. That period from 1966 to 1991 was called the long crisis because it encompassed all of the things that I just described, plus AIDS in New York City and all of these social ill, race riots, drugs that we've talked about, people eating each other in Tompkins Square Park. Dinkins was a political animal. He was really, really smart, and he was part of the, was it Carver Democratic Club in Harlem and worked his way through the non white political system of the city. And people were so sick of what had been going on that anyway, he edged out Ed Koch. Dinkins was the one who eradicated Ed Koch's melting pot concept and said that the city was a gorgeous mosaic. And he says that he's going to be the mayor for all of the people. New Yorkers, though, were extremely angry at the time. They were furious, and what they wanted was someone who was going to reflect their anger. And that anger, as we see in Do the Right Thing, was not going anyplace. It was only simmering and it was building and Dinkins, who did really, really good stuff during his time as Mayor, was not an incendiary character. No. He was cerebral. He was quiet. Dinkins was excoriated for not responding to Crown Heights. What that did, and we'll talk about Crown Heights on another podcast. But what that did was it opened up, it gave a toehold to our old friend Rudy Giuliani, and that was how Dinkins became a one term mayor. And Giuliani.

[39:09] Meg: And that does make sense. I do absolutely recall people feeling like Dinkins was kind of like Carter. He was like a nice guy who probably did his job, but certainly wasn't, as you're pointing out, responding to the energy that the city had at the time.

[39:27] Jessica: Exactly. And in fact, Giuliani using a signature Giuliani move again, like people from New York saw Trump coming. Anyone who referred to Giuliani as America's Mayor after 9/11 really needed a foot up their ass, because this is the kind of thing that Giuliani did. And I'm going to just read now, because if I tried to describe it, I'll become incensed and nonsensical.

[39:52] Meg: What are you quoting from?

[39:53] Jessica: I'm quoting from Politico. "In the fall of 1992, Giuliani kicked off his second campaign for mayor by egging on a frightening, drunken riot of thousands of cops at City Hall with a profanity laced rant while they cheered, yelled racist epithets, vandalized passing cars, insulted city council members to their faces, and held up obscene signs calling Dinkins a washroom attendant."

[40:19] Meg: Oh, my God.

[40:19] Jessica: Among other things, Giuliani and Dinkins were two sides of the same coin of New York City. Dinkins looking for a respectable, cerebral approach to solving problems and Giuliani totally tapping into the rage of the city and then having a run as mayor, where he continued to show exactly who he was. Do you remember how he and this I know about how he tried to close the Brooklyn Museum. "The Dung-Adorned Madonna that Giuliani once tried to ban was donated to MoMA by Steve Cohen." It was a black Virgin Mary beside elephant dung. That was the artwork. And he stated very openly that as a Catholic, that was not okay with him. And as a result, he tried to close the Brooklyn Museum, which was crazy, complete insanity and a precursor of many further insane rants. Anyway, the point of this and why I was intrigued. I was going to just talk about Dinkins as the first black mayor, and I thought part of Koch's shtick with, how am I doing? He saw himself as being so much like one of the people who was also guiding the people. I think he had this very inflated sense of self that he was all things to everyone, everywhere within the city, and his perspective just got skewed. And I think that you have a political career for as long as he did, for God's sakes, it was, what, like 30 or 40 years in New York politics, and you just think you're going to slide into another election. Yeah, I think it's complacency. And I think the whole how am I doing thing was also, you don't ask questions unless you know what the answer is going to be, right, when you're in politics or you're a lawyer, you try not to. And I think that his whole how am I doing campaign was assuming that everyone's going to say, you're doing great. After Yusef Hawkins was killed, it probably didn't occur to him. I mean, he knew it was terrible, but politically, what was the environment, and how is that going to affect him?

[42:36] Meg: And also, Al Sharpton had been building up a whole coalition of black power players, and they were very useful as far as getting Dinkins into office.

[42:50] Jessica: Well, and to speak to that, what I didn't know was that this Carver Democratic Club was the black response to Tammany Hall. And Tammany Hall, which had existed since the 19th century, which is really the king making machine of New York politics, basically, unless you were white and preferably Irish, you didn't stand a chance. And that's New York cops. There was sort of an assumption, and it was quite right, that for a very long time, if you were a cop, you were white and Irish, and that's where all of that power came from. And still police commissioners until relatively recently, were white Irish guys, but they were excluded from that. And quite rightly, they said, fine, we'll do our own. And that is the machine that a lot of the men that we've been talking about have, know, brought up in or promoted by. And what I also think is really interesting is that Giuliani, I mean, we all know now that he's a complete garbage human. And I say human tentatively, I'm not, I'm not really convinced entirely. I mean, he sort of slithers out of whatever hole he's in to grope someone or do whatever fucking nonsense he's up to. It makes me wonder, because of also how Dinkins only had one term, how much Dinkins win of that mayoral race was really about him, or about a turn in the tide of racial politics in the city, or was it really just get away from Koch? And that simmering rage was still there. And I also. I mean, this is now entirely my opinion, which may be worth zero, but racist white New Yorkers were really probably not very happy with the show of strength that was coming out of the Sharptons and out of Harlem at the time. Giuliani was a perfect way to put down an iron fist and say that gorgeous mosaic does not get to stick around too long. What I'm trying to say about Dinkins and Giuliani is that they were a study in contrasts that was outrageous. Giuliani got the better of him by being a racist troll. And there's this article in Gothamist that you have now found and are kindly letting me read from, quote, "Giuliani is to Dinkins what Trump was to Obama, said Christine Greer, an associate professor of political science at Fordham University and author of the book Black Ethnics: Race, Immigration, and the Pursuit of the American Dream. Someone who trolled a black man who had way more class, dignity, education and intelligence, constantly incited racist tropes to distract from the fact that this black person was actually doing a solid job. While Dinkins entered office with a promise of racial healing and an embrace of what he called the city's gorgeous mosaic, he ran headlong into an economic recession, high crime rates and racial strife, including the 1991 Crown Heights riot, where protesters took to the streets after a Hasidic driver hit and killed an African American boy. A rabbinical student was also killed during the protests. Crown Heights was seized upon by Giuliani, who was such a constant critic of the Dinkins administration, he even joined thousands of off duty police officers who surrounded city hall in September of '92, rioting against the sitting mayor." More grossness. Is that a completely legit political analysis? More gross. More grossness from the usual suspects of grotesqueness.

[46:56] Meg: So what is our tie in today? We've got subway violence. You might have already done the tie in.

[47:02] Jessica: I'm feeling grim today. I'm not feeling very fun or peppy. I'm feeling kind of grim today. Maybe it's like after our week of soot in the air and feeling kind of 9/11-ish after the Canadian forest fires.

[47:18] Meg: Unrest in the streets.

[47:21] Jessica: Yes. Maybe it's just how easy it is for there to be a moment where a group of people will commit to a heinous act. How that can turn in a second.

[47:34] Meg: We've talked a few times today about sort of mob mentality. The police officers at city hall and the people chasing that poor naked man and Do the Right Thing.

[47:48] Jessica: I don't know.

[47:49] Meg: And the awful kids in Howard Beach that we definitely have to do its own separate podcast about. Mob mentality. Not good.

[47:57] Jessica: I think you're right. I think that it's about mob mentality and how freaking scary it is. And I think also this just occurred to me. Everything we do is in such close quarters, if there's a mob doing something hideous, you can't really get away from it. It's happening in front of you. And it's pretty easy to, I think, if you are susceptible to get swept up into it and if you are not interested to wind up being a target.

[48:28] Meg: The flip of that, though, is those lovely people on your subway car who collectively decided to be very supportive of each other.

[48:36] Jessica: So are we going to coin a new concept, which is the positive mob?

[48:40] Meg: Positive mob.

[48:41] Jessica: Positive. It's like flash mobs, but cuter.