[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.

[00:27] Meg: And where we podcast about New York City in the '80s. I do ripped from the headlines.

[00:32] Jessica: And I do pop culture.

[00:35] Meg: We both had jam packed, borderline stressful weeks.

[00:41] Jessica: That is the understatement of the century.

[00:46] Meg: But you know what I was thinking about while I was looking at you over the top of my microphone was like, this has been such a lovely, constant thing that we have done now for over a year.

[01:00] Jessica: Well over a year.

[01:01] Meg: How crazy and how the rhythm of it. It feels good.

[01:06] Jessica: It's grounding. And I know that I need that. You know you deal with other people all the time. And even though my work has changed and I'm connected with more people every day, it's on Zoom or calls and I spend so much time alone that my brain can go into some very weird places. So having you here and knowing this is what we're doing and this is where we're going is really helpful. It's more than just grounding. It's the structure I so richly need and deserve. I don't know, for anyone who's listening, if you are feeling lost and kind of. I don't know, like, you know that feeling, like you're just floating out into orbit, you're not quite sure what you're doing with yourself. Just pick anything and do it once a week on the same day.

[01:58] Meg: Interesting. Yeah.

[01:59] Jessica: That's my giant takeaway these days, is just whatever it is. If it's like, a friend of ours makes sure that she goes to yoga at least twice a week. Like, that's her thing and that's it. And you're my thing.

[02:14] Meg: I love that. So in the '80s, really, all across the country, video games were a really big deal, correct?

[02:35] Jessica: Yes. I mean, we've talked about it before.

[02:37] Meg: We have.

[02:38] Jessica: Last episode, we talked about Playland, which was an arcade. Even though it had skeeball, it had lots of other, you know, Alex and I talked about in Yorkville, there was an arcade where you could go and potentially get beaten up or play Centipede.

[02:56] Meg: Right. And Alex and I talked about Nino's, the pizza place that just had a couple of video games, and Mimi's Pizza, I think he has also mentioned, which had a couple of games in the back. Have we ever talked about whether you had your favorite game? Did you play video games?

[03:15] Jessica: Yeah, my dad brought an Atari back from Japan.

[03:21] Meg: Okay, that's cool.

[03:22] Jessica: Like an early, early thing. So I remember actually playing Pong. But my favorite game. I don't know, I mean I liked all the early ones. It was fun. I wasn't like, you know this is my game and I have to get the high score. I'm going to freak out. But I do recall that Pac-Man would stress me out. Was it the noise? It made me be. The insistence of the noise and the speed and I could deal with being shot by a laser in Asteroids but being consumed by the ghosts or like it was just too much.

[03:55] Meg: And if you get better at it, it gets faster. Almost all the games work like that. It's just built in.

[04:02] Jessica: That must be why I really specialized in not excelling.

[04:06] Meg: My friends who, John and Jennifer who have a place in New Jersey. When we go visit them sometimes we go to Atlantic City. So much fun. And we go on the boardwalk and there's this incredible place that's got a video arcade. Am I right? Are we in Atlantic City? I think so.

[04:24] Jessica: I just love that you're not entirely sure. Is that where they live? Is that where we're going? That would make sense.

[04:30] Meg: I mean that's a famous boardwalk? Where. Where did Bruce Springsteen have his. Where's that famous venue?

[04:38] Jessica: The Stone Pony?

[04:40] Meg: Yeah.

[04:40] Jessica: Asbury Park.

[04:41] Meg: That's where we go.

[04:44] Jessica: Okay, if that's not proof that native Manhattanites.

[04:50] Meg: Oh my God. So embarrassing.

[04:52] Jessica: That other state that's right next to us is a thing, right? It's a thing.

[04:57] Meg: Okay. Am I going to leave that in? That just makes me look like such a dodo head anyway.

[05:02] Jessica: No it doesn't make you look like an idiot. It's just. Why would you know and you don't drive. People who drive would know where they are.

[05:09] Meg: The difference. Fair enough.

[05:10] Jessica: People who don't drive. We never. I don't know. We just magically arrive. Yes.

[05:15] Meg: It's a boardwalk. Okay. Famous boardwalk, Asbury Park. And there is a video place there and we went there. I don't even know. It wasn't that long ago, a year ago or whatever. I killed it on Centipede. I got the highest score. I still got it. That's my point.

[05:28] Jessica: Extraordinarily proud of you.

[05:30] Meg: Thank you very much.

[05:31] Jessica: Sure.

[05:31] Meg: My sources for today, New York Magazine and The New York Times. This is a sad story.

[05:37] Jessica: Okay. It's a good thing I'm drinking wine. I'm going to anesthetize myself as you tell this story.

[05:43] Meg: At around 07:30 P.M. On New Year's Day in 1984, 17 year old Joey Brennan and 21 year old Richard Dinneny headed to Games Games Games on 77th and 1st Avenue. That's where we went. I'm going to tell you a story.

[06:01] Jessica: Oh, no.

[06:02] Meg: Yeah.

[06:03] Jessica: All right.

[06:03] Meg: Joey and Richard were up to no good. And they had a baseball bat. Someone had been pestering Joey's girlfriend, who was Richard's sister, calling her on the phone and threatening her and Richard and Joey had decided to take care of the problem. Both boys grew up on the Upper East Side. Joey lived at 227 East 57th between 2nd and 3rd Aves, in the apartment building where his father was the superintendent. Joey came from a tight knit Irish American family. His father, Pete, the super, and all of his uncles were supers in Upper East Side apartment buildings. The five Brennan brothers were first generation Irishmen. And the large extended family. Joey had 25 first cousins.

[06:49] Jessica: That is unimaginable.

[06:51] Meg: And this whole family, they spent every holiday together. When he was seven, his brother Peter was whipping around a car aerial.

[07:01] Jessica: Oh, God.

[07:02] Meg: And it hit Joey in the temple. And the accident left Joey with a learning disability. And Joey ended up leaving school in the 9th grade to become a plumber's assistant. Richard Dinneny also left school after the 9th grade. He lived with his grandmother in Yorkville. Now, unlike Joey, he had some run ins with the law. He was arrested for assault when he was 16. And when he was 18, he pulled a knife on someone in the subway. All right, Games Games Games was pretty crowded that Sunday evening. Neighbors had been trying to get it shut down for years. Kids would loiter around the arcade, drinking and smoking and vandalizing parked cars. You're saying you went there? I never went there.

[07:46] Jessica: I think the time of day when we went there, like, we went there early.

[07:51] Meg: Okay.

[07:51] Jessica: But if there was ever anything nasty, it was when it started getting dark. Like 5:00/5:30.

[07:59] Meg: Okay.

[08:00] Jessica: No good.

[08:00] Meg: Zoning regulations prevented large gaming parlors, but March Toys, which owned the arcade, argued that the kids were not there to play the games. They were just testing them out to see if they wanted to buy them.

[08:14] Jessica: Oh, that is utter nonsense.

[08:16] Meg: Listen to this.

[08:17] Jessica: Buy a whole arcade game to take home.

[08:20] Meg: Yeah, the whole friggin thing that's bigger than they are. The quarters used to buy tokens were, quote, "installment contracts towards purchasing the machines."

[08:30] Jessica: I have never heard of anything so bananas.

[08:34] Meg: It's outrageous. When they were taken to court, that was their argument.

[08:39] Jessica: That is a really sad argument.

[08:41] Meg: But the case was still making its way through the courts on January 1, 1984. So weeks before that, there'd been some kind of altercation between Joey's girlfriend, remember, who is Richard's sister, and some other girl. The upshot of that spat was Joey's girlfriend was getting threatening phone calls from someone and Richard and Joey thought the boyfriend of the girl she was fighting with was the source of those calls. Does that make sense?

[09:11] Jessica: It does.

[09:11] Meg: Thank you.

[09:12] Jessica: Yeah.

[09:13] Meg: Such a complicated story if you don't have names. But I didn't want to make up names. Right. And Richard and Joey thought that that guy was at Games, Games, Games. So they showed up there with a bat. Quote, "they started bossing people around. You could just tell as soon as they walked in that they wanted trouble." Said a 14 year old girl who was at the arcade that night. Quote, "they were asking the kids about someone who wasn't there," said another girl. Jonny Habib was there. Jonny was 18 and lived at 83rd Street with his mom. Unlike Joey and Richard, his family was very well off. He went to the Baldwin School. Remember Baldwin School?

[09:51] Jessica: Yes.

[09:53] Meg: Jennifer Levin went to the Baldwin School and it's since closed down. And he also went to City-As-School, which was an alternative public school. His dad had a place in East Hampton. He vacationed in Florida. He loved to roller skate at The Roxy on 18th Street. And he was a fantastic disco dancer, frequenting xenon and Studio 54. He even got an internship with Jerry Rubin.

[10:16] Jessica: Wow.

[10:16] Meg: I know. On that Sunday, Jonny had slept in until eleven and then had brunch with his mom and her friends. That night he was supposed to get pizza and catch a movie with his girlfriend, who lived a block away from him. But she wasn't feeling well, so Jonny headed to Games, Games, Games at 6:45. His favorite game was Star Wars. He'd only been playing for 45 minutes when Joey and Richard burst in. Joey said later that Jonny, quote, "looked in my eyes. He gave a weird look. Joey called it the kiss eyes." Quote, "I went up to him and I said, you better stop making those threatening phone calls." Jonny had never met Joey and told him he didn't know what he was talking about. And Joey started punching him. Then Richard came up from behind Jonny and swung the bat at his head. One kid said Richard's arm with the bat was going like a clock. Joey said Richard, quote, "had no mercy in him or nothing. He just wanted to use the bat to kill." The rest of the kids in the arcade froze with fear. At least most of them did. The token seller barricaded himself behind a glass door in the back of the arcade. One girl pounded on the door, begging him to call the police. One of Jonny's friends smashed through the door's glass panel and grabbed the telephone. He called 911 and then called Jonny's mother. Jonny's mother, Sue, said, quote, "Jonny's friend said, there's been a fight at the arcade, and Jonny's been hit with a bat. I ran out of the apartment like a crazy woman." Jonny was taken to New York Hospital, Cornell Medical Center on 68th Street and York. His skull was cracked and there was bleeding in his cranium. 35 teenagers showed up at the hospital that night. By 09:00 A.M. The next morning, Jonny was declared brain dead. At noon, he was removed from life support. Even though Joey and Richard were not regulars at Games Games Games, some of the kids there recognized them from the neighborhood, and an armed posse of about 200 kids roamed the streets looking for them.

[12:20] Jessica: Oh, my God.

[12:21] Meg: Quote, "people had knives, guns, grenades. One of my best friends came down in a van from the Bronx with a bunch of really crazy guys with a shotgun gun." One friend from the Baldwin School said quote, "I told my friends let's not even tell the cops who they are, let's just go and get them, if I'd caught those guys, I'd have cut them up into little pieces". Eventually the kids did tell the police who Joey and Richard were. Turns out after they left the arcade Joey and Richard ran into the kid they'd been looking for in the first place and hit him with the bat, too, but that kid escaped with just bruises. Joey Brennan was ultimately sentenced to 22 years in prison for manslaughter. The defense tried to argue that his IQ of 68 should be taken into account, but Judge Jeffrey M. Atlas, who you might remember from the Marla Hanson story, said he believed Joey to, quote, "be capable of being manipulative and self protective." In a separate trial, Richard Dinneny got 21 years. In 2016.

[13:25] Jessica: Wait, the one who actually wielded the bat got one year less than the other?

[13:29] Meg: Well, see, this is what I don't know, because I know what Joey was sentenced to, and I know how much time Richard actually did. So Richard may have been sentenced to a longer period of time and was released earlier. All I know is that he served 21 years, and I don't know how many years Joey served. I don't know if he was let out. I kind of assume he was because Richard was. I couldn't find records on that. Okay, so Richard Dinneny was in prison for 21 years. And in 2016, 10 years after he'd been released from prison, he was shot and killed by police in Middletown, New York. He was drunk and waving a pellet gun. Crazy, right? Back in 1984, Games, Games, Games closed down four days after the murder. Pete Brennan, Joey's father, was shocked, disgraced, and devastated by what his son did. Reportedly, he lit a candle daily for Jonny Habib at St. John the Evangelist Church on 1st Avenue after the attack. Jonny's friend John Spiering said, quote, "sometimes I think I could die. I never used to think that before." That's it. Just a senseless murder. I'm sorry.

[14:41] Jessica: Well, at least it wasn't a two year old, which is one of your other specialties. Oh, my God. So during the telling of that tale, I had such a vivid image of what was going on. And one of the things that we've talked about on this podcast is how Yorkville was so, the thing about living in that neighborhood was that you had really poor kids who were not just poor kids, they were rough and then these private school kids who had no understanding of how to look after themselves. There was nothing that would prepare a kid for something like that. And these kids who were coming from possibly rough households, or they were just running with 84th Street gang types. It's so weird when telling the story, I'm sort of flooded with these really visceral memories of just seeing these other kids and being like, look away and move. And it was a source of anxiety, but it was also kind of like, if you didn't look at, I mean, for me as a girl, I'm sure it was something different, but if you don't make eye contact, you're fine, just stay away. But interestingly, because there's a girl involved in all this, I'm now remembering the girls. And the girls were freaking tough, they were problem. They were not as problematic maybe because they were less prone to be armed, I don't know, but those girls who lived on the side streets in Yorkville really were the female counterparts of these guys.

[16:28] Meg: I was struck by the fact that they both left school in the 9th grade. That sounds to me like Hell's Kitchen at the turn of the century. The fact that that was acceptable just a few years back is, well, interesting. Of note.

[16:48] Jessica: Yes. I mean, one of the people who I'm working with on a book was telling me about how growing up in southern California, the notion of staying in school, staying in school was one of several options. It wasn't what your parents necessarily wanted for you, but if you got a job and were making an effort to have a productive life, it was not that unheard of and we talk a lot about how our generation straddles different, I guess, cultural moments and mores and I'm just thinking about, like, people in our parents generation who were the parents of these kids. Right, right, definitely. Like lots of, I mean, you were saying that these were children of immigrants where they had to make money, they had to feed the family. And so school, you only had to go to school through a certain age until you were no longer a truant. So making it all the way through was, for a lot of families, less about moving on and up than avoiding truancy. Those are the remnants that you're talking about right there.

[17:58] Meg: I guess I assumed that that was a couple of generations ago instead of our generation and that those movies, I mean, we see it in Fame, we see it in My Bodyguard, which takes place in Chicago, but I still kind of imagine that it takes place in New York, but I mean, you definitely get this sense of like, the kids, you're going to get in trouble if you don't come to school, but maybe they're just going to drop out junior year, that kind of thing. I mean, I saw it in movies. I didn't realize that that was happening all around me. I really didn't.

[18:30] Jessica: Well, and this person. There's a completely viable option. Yeah. This person who I was talking to who grew up in southern California, their perspective was that school was at a premium on the east coast and then on the west coast, it was even less important. It was about like, are you going to make money and have a life and have a family? And I don't know about that. I don't know if it's that much of an east coast west coast divide or that was just that person's perception, anecdotal. But I think it's interesting. It is this function of you go to school so you can get a degree, so you can earn money. So if you can go straight to earning the money, what's the point of staying in school? And especially because you know, the way you describe the Brennan family, they were all in a union. And being a plumber's assistant, that's also a union

[19:23] Meg: Yeah, that's a very good job.

[19:25] Jessica: Yeah. And so I guess that's the other thing that we're not taking into account, that those unions, if you got in, you had your whole life taken care of. And again, I have no idea what the situation is now. And it's probably worth some research with who enters unions, what are the demographics and how many now versus 40 years ago?

[19:49] Meg: And I love the Brennan family. They were so tight knit. I mean, there were hundreds of them. Right. And not one of them had had any trouble with the law. So we talk about, oh, some of these violent kids might have come from a violent family. Not in this case.

[20:05] Jessica: Well, you had a kid who was brain damaged. I'm sure there were a lot, always are a lot of people who are functionally challenged or mentally challenged, who get swept up because of belonging and being part of something with gangs and with, I'm going to use the complete, most ridiculous phrase, but ne'er-do-well's.

[20:28] Meg: It's running with the wrong crowd.

[20:31] Jessica: Yeah, like, easily influenced. And the Brennan family, the way that you're describing it. And it stands to reason that if there's no history of this, none.

[20:40] Meg: That's what the article said.

[20:41] Jessica: You have this outlier, and you have an outlier for a reason. We talk about how on this podcast, how we think about how we perceived things then and how we perceive them now. And I remember being afraid because I was 14 when that happened. I was thinking of the girl who was trying to get the guy in the token booth to pay attention. A 16 year old, looked, like, very strong and powerful. And I think about that whole scene as an adult at this age and at this stage in my life, and I just think, my God, these were children. This is like Lord of the Flies.

[21:20] Meg: Exactly. Can you imagine being that girl who was pounding on the door when the one, I assume, adult in the room barricaded and preserved his own safety, and the other kid who burst through the glass and called 911 and then called the mother? I mean, that's a lot to take on as a kid. What on earth?

[21:47] Jessica: I cannot imagine that I would have done any of that when I was 14.

[21:52] Meg: And that all those kids then felt like they needed to fan out. Sure, vigilante justice, but also, no one else was protecting them. So I kind of think it makes sense that they would be like, oh, yeah, we'll take care of this.

[22:07] Jessica: I had exactly the same thought. I was like, I know that I should be kind of against this mob justice, but I get it. And you know what? If someone took a baseball bat to you, I would go insane. I'm assuming that's not going to happen.

[22:23] Meg: Yeah, no, let's not will that to happen. But I hear you, and I really appreciate it. Thank you.

[22:28] Jessica: But that's my point, especially when you're a kid, when your emotions run so high and logic doesn't really enter to the scene as much. The fury and the terror, actually, of having seen that, and then the trauma and the after effect. I think vigilante justice just, it tracks.

[22:48] Meg: Absolutely. Oh, those poor kids.

[22:50] Jessica: Awful.

[22:52] Meg: I hope they're all doing okay now, because that was traumatic, and that happened to all of them.

[22:56] Jessica: Well it's a life changer. You absolutely do.

[23:10] Meg: One thing that made me happy this week.

[23:12] Jessica: Oh, God, please tell me it happened.

[23:14] Meg: This morning. Somebody posted on our instagram, someone who we don't know personally, and they said, good. And they said something really sweet. "I always learn a lot from these posts. I look the people up and research the history." Desperately '80s and then a clap emoji.

[23:34] Jessica: They're doing research.

[23:39] Meg: Yeah. It was the first thing I saw when I woke up this morning. I was like, my life has meaning.

[23:46] Jessica: Educating people about the things that are not from now, but from before. Oh, my God. It's God's work. All right, well, I have bad news.

[24:05] Meg: Yeah.

[24:06] Jessica: I also have a really sad story.

[24:08] Meg: Okay. We can do it. We can do it. It's our mood this week.

[24:12] Jessica: And it's not like me to do a sad story, but there were a lot of elements in this one that I was like uh huh, yup, Oh, I know that. It's sad, but I will tell you something and for those listeners of ours who are interested in history and research, I have become obsessed with The New York Times time machine, or they call it Times Machine. And I just read the newspaper from the '80s and I just am finding all kinds of wacky, wacky stuff where, of course, my perspective is like, that's what was happening. Oh, my God.

[24:50] Meg: Who knew?

[24:52] Jessica: So I wanted to do, and I suppose I am doing a second installment of Times Square.

[25:00] Meg: Okay.

[25:01] Jessica: And I found an article from Monday, May 30, 1988, which was Memorial Day weekend. The first article that I saw that I was really taken with it was about how old Times Square, which we've talked about how it's been glamorized, like the grossness.

[25:22] Meg: And it used to be seedy.

[25:23] Jessica: Right. That there is a reason that some of those places hung on for so long. And so I found this great article titled Old Times Square: A Block of Memories by David Dunlap and it tells the story of the owners or the managers of the last Howard Johnson's.

[25:45] Meg: Oh, wow.

[25:47] Jessica: In Times Square. It's very sweet. They talk about how they're on a stretch of Broadway that just had a bunch of holdouts and they refused to sell to developers and one of those on that block was Playland.

[26:02] Meg: Yes. It's on the same block.

[26:04] Jessica: Yes and so Howard Johnson's, Playland. And then, interestingly, a bunch of what were strip clubs and seedy places like that, burlesque joints, formerly burlesque. They were talking about how they were actually in these really amazing theaters from the '20s.

[26:22] Meg: Are you kidding?

[26:23] Jessica: That like so many buildings in New York, if you stripped away the facade that had been built around it, that you could see these incredible palaces that were there and that the interiors of these nudie dance whatever joints, it was really like plywood walls that had been put up around what really existed because it was just cheap. It was easy to do instead of having to gut it and make something else.

[26:54] Meg: Sure. Like those bathrooms, you can get, you just like, plunk a new bathroom inside your current bathroom.

[27:00] Jessica: Yes, the molded bathrooms. So the delightful people were Morris and Jack Rubenstein, who had been managing, as of 1988, they had been managing that Howard Johnson's for 40 years. A few years prior, the Howard Johnson's on 49th street had been knocked down, but they rescued the original neon sign with Simple Simon and the Pieman, and they had moved it over to where they were. And I just loved how New York this quote is, I almost have to do it in an old New York accent, but I'm going to control myself, but here's the quote from Mr. Rubenstein, quote, "as long as the lord will spare me in this world, it's not for sale, he said. I'd like to keep a Howard Johnson's in Times Square, the old man was my friend. He means Johnson himself, who died in 1972." As a tribute to the founder, Mr. Rubenstein saved and restored the old neon Simple Simon sign from the now demolished restaurant on 49th street. "I'm not interested in money", Mr. Rubenstein said. "What am I going to do with the money? I already give to charity. What else do I need? What would I do with $20 million? Would I have a better cup of coffee? Would I get a better sandwich? Could I see a better show? Money doesn't mean nothing, it's the good name that you have." There's something pleasantly anachronistic about this Howard Johnson's. The fact that it has nachos and teriyaki on the menu cannot hide the fact that it still offers patty melts and saltwater taffy. Betty Tiffany, whose showgirl career began as a dancing showgirl at the Earl Carroll Theater, has been greeting guests there since 1959.

[28:52] Meg: Wow.

[28:52] Jessica: So I've given you just a taste of that. And that was the thing that caught my eye.

[28:57] Meg: Can I tell you my Howard Johnson's story?

[28:59] Jessica: Yes.

[29:00] Meg: So it's in the early 90s. I am a young actress in the city, and I'm not going to name any names, but I was a reader for an audition for a casting director, and I was there all day long while he was having people come in. And at the end of the day, he asked if he could buy me a cup of coffee at the Howard Johnson's across the street. And I said, of course you can, Mr. Casting Director. And we sat in one of the booths at that Howard Johnson's in Times Square and he told me about how he and his wife were having a lot of problems.

[29:38] Jessica: Oh, yes. And then snaked his hand right up your skirt.

[29:41] Meg: No, he really didn't. He really didn't. But there were some red flags. I will say that I still go in when he calls me into auditions, but all I did, I just had a cup of coffee, and I listened to him talk about his issues with his marriage.

[29:59] Jessica: Did you order the pie?

[30:00] Meg: I don't think I had pie. I honestly believe I just had a few cups of coffee. But it was so. It was so actress in New York, I could hardly stand myself. Where is this candid camera? I'm so legit.

[30:10] Jessica: I mean it really is out of a script that you'd reject. Actually, in this article, they talk about how one of the other holdouts used to be an automat, but it had become a McDonald's or a Burger King, and that you could still see some of the glass installations where they had the doors. For anyone who doesn't know what an automat was, it was literally an automated, the first automated lunch counter or cafeteria, and no one would serve you. There were people behind these endless rows, up and across of little glass doors, and you would put in a nickel and turn it, or however much it was, and turn the handle and pull out your hot pie or your mulligatawny stew or whatever it was. And they had people behind it who would just keep stocking it. And in the dear friend Suzanne from camp came to New York, and we were like, let's do something like super New York that I haven't done. So we went to the last automat in the city. I'm pretty sure it was on the east side. If this doesn't say everything, I don't know what does. We ate. We had so much fun. We walked outside, and I was immediately gripped by a stomach cramp of such unparalleled horror and I was like, I'm dying from the automat. And she was like, oh, my God, what are we going do. I'm sure she thought that I was just going to soil myself on Park Avenue or wherever we were. And she'd never hailed a cab before. Oh, no. And she was like, what do I do? Like, you put your fucking hand in the air. What do you think you do? And she's a regular listener to this podcast, so I invite Suzanne. Yes. To please write in with her exact memory of our first and last time at the last automat.

[32:27] Meg: That's amazing.

[32:28] Jessica: It couldn't have been later than, like, 1986. So there is that. But anyway, so here's the sad thing.

[32:35] Meg: Okay?

[32:35] Jessica: So while I was looking at this and thinking, well, how do I make a full story out of this? I scanned up. So this is the metropolitan news section of the newspaper.

[32:46] Meg: For that one day.

[32:49] Jessica: For that one day. May 30, 1988, Monday, serving New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, metropolitan area. And the headline is, Runaways of 42md Street: AIDS Begins Its Scourge.

[33:05] Meg: Oh, no.

[33:05] Jessica: And this particular article, it touches on so many things that we've talked about on this podcast. I was just like, oh, my God, I need to read this. And it's actually, and I'll read little bits of it, but it is a profile of a very young kid who has AIDS, and they're sort of using it.

[33:27] Meg: Is he a sex worker?

[33:29] Jessica: Well, first off, let's go back to, I think it was episode two or three about the Minnesota Strip. Yes. And we talked about how kids would come to New York and then get plucked off the bus and lose their way. This was a kid who, like a lot of kids and this is how the article begins. These were throwaways. These were not runaways. These are actual New York City kids. They were not included in their family for any number of reasons. And the person who they profiled was actually, you think, oh, it's a gay kid. It's whatever. No, this was a kid who was born on Rikers Island. So his mother was a drug addict and was imprisoned. So this talks a lot about, like, who was going to jail at the time. What was that about? And so he was born in Rikers and then went into the foster care system and was pretty much always a mess. This is written by Suzanne Daley, and I'm going to just quote from the opening. "Robert was born on Rikers Island, and his luck never got much better. By the time he was 13, he was a runaway, living amid the peep shows and video arcades of Times Square. By the time he was 19, he had lost 80 pounds, most of his teeth and all of his hope. And by Christmas time last year, he was dead of AIDS. The number of teenagers with acquired immune deficiency syndrome remains small. In New York City, only 41 cases have been diagnosed. But for the teenagers of Times Square, living at a crossroads of illegal drugs and $5 sex, the odds grow worse every day." What was so striking about this is that this poor kid had everything that we've talked about or that has come up on this podcast happening to him. Sexual abuse at home, foster care system. So lost in the foster care system, he never learned to read. Being on the street, his only recourse was to turn tricks. And one of the things that it talks about that I thought was also very interesting that we haven't talked about on this podcast, is when we've talked about the Lower East Side and people who were living in really bad conditions, but they were artists, or they were adults, or you had adults who were addicts and were living in shooting galleries, these kids and there was a play that I know you'll remember. I think it was by Liz Swados called Runaways

[36:07] Meg: We've talked about it. We did podcast.

[36:09] Jessica: It's good to know that.

[36:10] Meg: Yeah, we can call back.

[36:11] Jessica: Call back Liz Swados you know, that was really about what this kid was living. That he lived with other kids wherever they could find a space, and that in these really derelict buildings, the reporter was saying that these kids were just trying to find community. There's even one girl who had collected thrown away stuffed animals that were all collected on her bed and that these kids were actually having more, I mean, this is obviously not by any actual measure, but the reporters reckoning more sex than anybody in the city because they were being paid for it, or they were comforting each other and using drugs for the obvious reasons. And that's why this hotbed of kids contracting AIDS was starting to happen in Times Square. And what really struck me was that this article is from 1988, and the headline is Runaways of 42nd Street: AIDS Begins Its Scourge. And I went back and I was like, wait a minute. What's the timeline here? Did you realize that it wasn't really talked about in a way that you and I would have ever heard of or picked up on until 1986? It was so in only the gay community and government circles.

[37:34] Meg: I know exactly because we've talked about on the podcast. I know exactly when I started talking about it because I started working at AID Atlanta, which was an organization in Atlanta, Georgia. Yeah, that's where I volunteered. And that's basically where I learned a lot about it.

[37:47] Jessica: I had a friend, Katrine, who was extremely active in the New York area. And for whatever reason, I recall that in the mid '90s, that was when I think it really became very prominent in my life and my awareness, which is weird. The wonderful Barbara, who I've talked about several times with the fur coat and on the last one, the fake id. I remember the first time that I heard anyone talk about AIDS who was not like someone on the news. She was relaying a joke, an AIDS joke that an old woman had told her in the beauty salon as like, dig in the ribs. And I remember being like, what the fuck? Appalling. What is going on here? Not that she was being inappropriate. I just recall hearing this joke and being like, what the fuck? So, yeah, in 1988, this was oh, it's the dawn of this. And I was just like, I was reading this and I was like, what a bizarre thing. And people who are reading the newspaper, like, what were they aware of or not aware of where this did know most likely did not bring in and this is entirely my assumption, not based on anything but zillions of letters of rage, except from Larry Kramer. Larry Kramer was busy typing up a lot of rage letters. And in his last few months, predictably, where did Robert turn up, this is another callback for us.

[39:27] Meg: I don't know.

[39:27] Jessica: Covenant House.

[39:29] Meg: Okay, well, that's when we were talking about Runaways.

[39:32] Jessica: Yes. And so he wound up at Covenant House, but he was already so sick that he was not able to really deal with the other kids there and he went missing, and the other kids were trying to find him and then it turned out that he had been in the building the whole time, unable to find his room.

[39:52] Meg: Oh, my God.

[39:53] Jessica: This is the last little bit of that article. "The day before Robert died in December, his mother was released from jail for 1 hour to visit him in the hospital. But he was in a coma by then. Robert's funeral, the counselor said, was handled by the family and was a fairly extravagant affair with dozens of relatives and the fancy bouquets of flowers. It was hard for us to watch that, Ms. Somerville said, all these people saying, "oh, Robert, oh, Robert." We looked at this family and we wondered where they had been and in fact, earlier in the article, they talk about how the grandmother had said to him, you can come here if you have a signed letter from a doctor that you don't have AIDS.

[40:33] Meg: Oh, my God.

[40:34] Jessica: Grim. But the other thing that it reminded me of is when I was in law school. And so this is a few years after this is, I think, 1993, I visited Rikers, which was a very bizarre experience. One of the things that we learned about, and it was in a very offhand way, was the women who are coming into Rikers pregnant and what happened to them, and that they would give birth handcuffed to a hospital bed. And then the baby was immediately at that point, not instantly whisked away, but taken to a nursery at Rikers. And then after, maybe it was like a month or two or three, and maybe it was for nursing or whatever, but the kids were then put into foster care or family custody and I couldn't help thinking about, like, this is after Robert had died, but if that was the improved humanity at the time, what happened to these people? I mean, in 1988, he was 18. He's our age. He was born same year as us. So what was being afforded these women, who were probably considered, I'm quite sure, considered the absolute bottom of the barrel as drug addicts who were not getting helped and obviously had no way to heal.

[41:58] Meg: Well, no spoilers, but I am working on a Rikers Island story.

[42:03] Jessica: Oh, my God. See how we are together, this is how it happens.

[42:21] Meg: Synergy. We have so many tie ins, it's like, how do we even count them?

[42:24] Jessica: Well, I'm always coming up with. I'm. I'm always blurting something out, so I'm ceding the floor today. Which one do you.

[42:33] Meg: Video arcades is the obvious one.

[42:36] Jessica: Yes.

[42:37] Meg: Kids communing with each other, trying to make their own way without parental supervision or guidance or help or parenting to.

[42:46] Jessica: And what happens to them when they're not.

[42:47] Meg: Lord of the Flies.

[42:48] Jessica: Yeah. So Lord of the Flies is our, there are too many sad tie ins.

[42:53] Meg: Yeah.

[42:54] Jessica: This is a sad day.

[42:55] Meg: Yeah.

[42:56] Jessica: I don't know what this is.

[42:57] Meg: I don't know. We should take care of our children. Take care of the children.

[43:01] Jessica: Holding your fist up. It's the sign of fortitude and courage. Wasn't that Dan Rather's thing? That was another callback.

[43:10] Meg: Yeah, this is what he said. Courage.

[43:13] Jessica: Courage, courage. Courage.