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

[00:19] 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.

[00:26] Meg: And where we podcast about New York City in the '80s. I do ripped from the headlines.

[00:33] Jessica: And I do pop culture with a dash of history. As you know, in life, I don't relish being corrected.

[00:42] Meg: Okay.

[00:43] Jessica: But it is a good thing to be corrected because you learn new things.

[00:47] Meg: Absolutely.

[00:48] Jessica: And one of our BFF's of the cast texted me and said. Which one, may I ask? You're gonna know in 5 seconds.

[00:57] Meg: Okay.

[00:58] Jessica: They were not at The Townhouse.

[01:00] Meg: Oh, it was Nick.

[01:03] Jessica: Yes. It didn't open until the end of '89.

[01:06] Meg: Okay.

[01:07] Jessica: The "nightclub" on East 59th was probably Bogart's on 59th street between 2nd and 1st Avenues. It had a piano bar in the front and a restaurant in the back where there was dancing late at night.

[01:24] Meg: All right, thank you, Nick.

[01:26] Jessica: Indeed. Thank you, Nick.

[01:28] Meg: And I assume Bogart's is no longer with us.

[01:30] Jessica: Bogart's is no longer with us. You know what? I say that with so much authority, which gets me in trouble. The way that he said it made me think it does not exist. But, you know, a quick search will let us know.

[01:43] Meg: And while you're searching, I was talking to Nick a little bit about doing a story on The Townhouse, and he said, this is a while ago, this was like a month or so ago, or at the beginning of the summer and he was like, you know, The Townhouse was really more of a '90s thing. So that was, he steered me away from that as an '80s story.

[02:02] Jessica: Bogart's is dead. The very first thing that comes up is RIP to All the Gay Bars in New York City I've Known.

[02:10] Meg: Okay

[02:11] Jessica: And Bogart's tops the list.

[02:13] Meg: Speaking of dead things.

[02:15] Jessica: Oh, my favorite. Yay.

[02:18] Meg: Let's get into my story.

[02:20] Jessica: I'm so excited. There's gonna be a gruesome murder.

[02:36] Meg: My engagement question today. Manhattan is an island.

[02:41] Jessica: Yes. Yes, it is. Off the coast of America.

[02:44] Meg: Yeah. And which is exactly the line that you gave last week.

[02:47] Jessica: Because I am consistent if nothing else.

[02:52] Meg: But there are a bunch of other islands off the coast of Manhattan and the Bronx and Brooklyn.

[03:00] Jessica: Do we acknowledge them?

[03:01] Meg: Well, I'm going to acknowledge one of them today. Name some of them off the top of your head.

[03:06] Jessica: Well, because I'm a history wackadoo. I'm like, ooh, Blackwell's Island, where they stuck Typhoid Mary (Mary Mallon). That's one of them.

[03:13] Meg: All right. That's cool.

[03:14] Jessica: There's Staten.

[03:15] Meg: There's Staten Island, there's Randall's Island, there's Roosevelt Island, Ellis Island, Liberty Island, Governors Island. Governors Island, where we're gonna go and have a wonderful. I'm so looking forward to it. Semi Tulum luncheon. Is it lunch? Brunch? No.

[03:34] Jessica: What are we doing? Dinner?

[03:35] Meg: We're having dinner.

[03:35] Jessica: We're having dinner. Oh, thank God. All right.

[03:37] Meg: Tulum-esque, I should say.

[03:38] Jessica: Yes. I was just worried that that was just another fact that I had forgotten.

[03:43] Meg: That we're actually having brunch there. No. I'm so excited. And do you know anything about the Pelham Islands? It's like City Island. It's up near the Bronx, so City Island.

[03:54] Jessica: I have a weird. Rikers Island. Well, I've been to Rikers Island.

[03:58] Meg: Oh, you told me that.

[03:59] Jessica: Yes.

[04:00] Meg: And I still need to do a Rikers Island story.

[04:02] Jessica: Yes, you absolutely do.

[04:04] Meg: Yeah.

[04:06] Jessica: I knew a guy in the '90s whose name was something that I will not repeat because I don't know if he would appreciate it. There's nothing bad in this story, but his last name was Pell, P-E-L-L. The people around us were rather impressed with him. And I was like, it's just another, you know, preppy jock boy. Like, what's the deal? And it turns out that that is the Pell family that owned those islands of which you speak. Pelham Bay, that sort of thing. But why are you talking about islands?

[04:42] Meg: My sources are The New York Times, The Hart Island Project, and The Atlantic.

[04:50] Jessica: Okay.

[04:51] Meg: In 1985, SC-B1 1985 was buried on Hart Island.

[05:00] Jessica: Oh, my God.

[05:01] Meg: Which is an island located off the coast of the Bronx and is the largest potters field in the US. SC stands for special child, B1 means baby number one.

[05:16] Jessica: No. I can't with this already.

[05:20] Meg: SC-B1 one was the first baby to die of AIDS in New York City. His or her name is unknown. Special child was buried at the same time as 16 other victims of AIDS as the first group of AIDS burials on Hart Island as a potter's field, Hart Island is where the bodies of the poor, unidentified or unclaimed, are buried to this day.

[05:46] Jessica: Yes.

[05:47] Meg: Typically, the bodies are placed in pine boxes stacked three boxes deep in large trenches, which are then covered over. Each trench can contain about 150 adults or 1000 infants. The island started being used for -

[06:03] Jessica: That's like the worst SAT math problem of all time.

[06:07] Meg: How many infants equals an adult? The island started being used for burial shortly after the Civil War. And of the million bodies buried on Hart Island, one third are infants or fetal remains. Fetal remains have reached at least ten weeks gestation, but died in utero. Now, how do you fit a million bodies into 131 acres? The mass graves are recycled, because of the pine boxes the bodies decompose naturally, and over time, the trenches are able to be reused. Special child, along with the 16 other in that first AIDS burial were treated very differently from that. Inmates from Rikers Island were tasked with burying the dead.

[06:58] Jessica: Oh, my God.

[06:59] Meg: Who were shipped to Hart Island. But in 1985, they were terrified the inmates were of catching AIDS from this group of bodies. So they chose a plot on the southern tip of the island, far from the other mass graves. They wore protective gear and dug exceptionally deep graves, unlike the relatively shallow mass graves, each body was given an individual plot, and they disposed and replaced their protective gear after each burial. Those 17 bodies were the first delivery of many to come. By 1987, AIDS was killing thousands of New Yorkers a year who were by that time given the standard burial in mass graves along with the other poor and unclaimed, many AIDS victims were estranged from their families and had no one to provide private burials. Others who had friends and families were turned away from funeral homes who refused to handle the corpses or charged outrageous fees. For many, Hart Island was the only option. As a result, it is believed that the island is the single largest burial ground in the country for people with AIDS. And because AIDS wards were crowded with patients and doctors and nurses were focused on treating the living, no one kept close track of the unclaimed bodies. Quote "Part of the history of the AIDS epidemic is buried on Hart Island, and it's the unknown part", said Melinda Hunt, a visual artist and advocate who's in charge of The Hart Island Project, which is trying to reunite families with their loved ones who are buried there. The Hart Island Project is a website, it's beautiful. You can search people's names, but you can also search the place where they died, the date, any facts that you have of them, and then they can suggest a possible number, like a serial number that this body was. And then you can do extra research to find out if that, in fact was your relative or friend. And if you do identify that person, you can write in stories about that person. So right now you could go on the website and read people's stories. It's really a wonderful website. By 1987, 494 babies had been diagnosed with AIDS in the United States. 189 of those babies were in New York. More than 90% of the babies were Black or Hispanic, and 80% of them were born to drug abusing parents. Most were abandoned by parents who were frightened or confused or drug addicted. Some were orphaned by parents who died of AIDS. Most had contracted the virus in utero. In 1987, Harlem Hospital opened the Hale Cradle in a Harlem brownstone.

[09:55] Jessica: Mother Hale. Yep, I remember this. She was a saint. She was amazing.

[10:02] Meg: Yes. And she started pre AIDS, she was treating babies of drug addicted or alcoholic parents, basically babies who didn't have anyone to take care of them. And then once it became clear that AIDS was rampant amongst babies, she then put all of her focus into AIDS babies.

[10:24] Jessica: Was she a nurse or a caring citizen? I mean, not that those are exclusive, but -

[10:27] Meg: You know, I don't think she was a nurse.

[10:31] Jessica: I don't remember her being one. I think that she, she just has, just like, I will do what no one else will do.

[10:36] Meg: And her daughter, too. So the Hale Cradle was in a Harlem brownstone, and it had room for 15 abandoned or orphaned AIDS babies, most of whom were expected to die before their second birthday, having never left a hospital. One nurse said, "These kids are learning to walk in the hospital. They're wearing donated clothes and playing with donated toys that we solicited at Christmas. The nurses are being mamas and papas and doing their best, but this is no place for a kid to grow up." The chief pediatric social worker, Barbara Martin, described the mothers quote, "We're talking about very sad women who basically love and care about their children, but they're not planning or thinking about the future. These are mothers who have many sex partners, who grow up as third generation on welfare, who live in crack houses and neighborhoods with 36 year old grandmothers and 11 year old prostitutes. A lot of them have been shooting drugs since they were 14. A lot of them are just so needy and when they feel bad, they can't go to Bloomingdale's like you or I and buy things. I often wonder what kind of a mother I'd be living in two rooms with seven people. We almost never see the fathers." So that was a quote she gave at the time, and I'm sure it's based in fact, but it also sounds.

[11:57] Jessica: It doesn't. The Bloomingdale's part really comes across very poorly.

[12:01] Meg: Yeah. And it's also anecdotal. This is what she experienced. I wonder what the actual numbers are.

[12:08] Jessica: Yeah. Where did that come from?

[12:11] Meg: Barbara Martin, the chief pediatric social worker. There's something about it that just sounds dated.

[12:18] Jessica: Well, and that is what's so interesting. Like, when we talk about the news of the day, I feel like the on my part when I find stuff like this, that the quotes are either provided sort of ironically, they're already given a tone by the author. They're acknowledging this is dated, so it's the setup or they're just omitted. Like, you don't see a lot of those kinds of comments. That's what really interests me is that you found that. At the time, my perspective, my memory is that at the time, that actually would have been seen as an extremely kind thing to say and isn't it interesting now it's a lead balloon. And at the time, that would have been really generous and sweet.

[13:05] Meg: I'm really glad that you are bringing this up because it's going to come up. The concept of compassion and open mindedness is going to come up later in this story, too. The way that people talked about people who had AIDS was very loaded.

[13:21] Jessica: Well, I mean, people deal with abject fear in different ways. You know, I was actually with a friend who does not live in New York. We were talking about COVID and what it was like in New York, because though he had been New Yorker for 25 years, he had moved back to the midwest. And I was describing it to him. He was like, for all of the things that I saw in New York, what you were describing is bananas. And I was like, yes, because it wasn't just what was happening. It was, everything was loaded with fear. And fear colors every single decision that you make and the way that you speak about everything. And with AIDS, I think one of the things that we don't talk about a lot is everyone around it behaved horribly. Not everybody, but people, they weren't sympathetic. The fear that you could die from a touch was real because you simply did not know. So when you talk about this and this woman's statement, it sounds tone deaf now, but at the time when the way that people were dealing with their fear was extreme callousness and jokes that were really off color. And I remember a whole bunch of them. Remember what I told you? Just ruminating on it. I'm feeling in my being more and more how kind that statement must have been. I know that's a bit rambling, but that's what strikes me.

[15:00] Meg: It's all relative, right?

[15:01] Jessica: Completely.

[15:02] Meg: So, as you mentioned, there was a lot of disinformation about how the disease was spread. At that time, many didn't believe HIV could be spread by people who didn't show symptoms, and many shared needles. In 1989, Princess Diana traveled to New York without Charles, stayed at the Hotel Plaza Athenee, and on the third day of her visit, she went to Harlem Hospital specifically to meet the AIDS babies. Gwen Elliot-McIntosh, a hospital administrator, remembers, quote, "these children were so very, very ill. And at the time, not much was known about how to assist them. It was just really heartbreaking. There was so much misinformation about AIDS that people believed you couldn't touch a doorknob or sit on a toilet or you would get it. People thought you had to shun people who had AIDS. It was a very bad time." Martha Grate, a nurse at the time, adds, quote, "people were so afraid to go into the children's room, we had to encourage the housekeepers to go in there, but Princess Diana picked up a baby and looked at the baby like there was no one else in the room. She talked to the children and hugged them. She gave them love. She made a beeline for one 7 year old boy in blue pajamas and", Prince William was 5 at the time. So maybe that was her attraction to a little boy that age, "she asked him, are you heavy? And then picked him up." says nurse Grate, quote, "he was a very precocious child. He was really kind of challenging. And when Princess Diana picked him up, I thought, oh, my gosh, I hope you don't act out. We were all holding our breath. But he put his head on her shoulder. He hung onto her. Diana held her finger out so a 20 month old girl in a pink frilly dress could grip it" Quote, "most of the kids that were there at that time, they're no longer with us. By the time they got on that floor, the prognosis was so bad for them." Back to 1985, when special child was buried alone on Hart Island. That was the year that Koch won his third term and he and Cuomo closed the bathhouses. The Normal Heart opened at The Public and 4133 cases of AIDS were reported in New York City, an increase of 207 from the month before. It would be two years before Ronald Reagan finally spoke publicly about AIDS at a fundraising dinner for amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research, whose chairperson was Elizabeth Taylor. In the speech, Reagan lamented the plight of some groups susceptible to HIV - hemophiliacs, spouses of IV drug users, blood transfusion recipients and babies of infected women. These were the so called innocent victims. He never used the words gay or homosexual. In 1989, Elizabeth Glaser, wife of Paul Glaser.

[18:09] Jessica: I remember this.

[18:10] Meg: And who's Paul Glaser?

[18:12] Jessica: Hutch or Starsky?

[18:13] Meg: Starsky.

[18:14] Jessica: Starsky.

[18:14] Meg: Detective Dave Starsky on Starsky & Hutch, founded the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, which is to this day a major force in funding the study of pediatric HIV problems and tackling juvenile AIDS. Elizabeth contracted HIV from a blood transfusion while giving birth to their first child, passed HIV to her daughter through breastfeeding, and four years later to her son in utero. She didn't know she was infected. Her daughter died in 1988 when she was 7. Elizabeth died in 1994 when she was 47. Her son is still living. The identities of the 17 people who died of AIDS in the first burial on Hart Island in 1985 are unknown.

[19:01] Jessica: This is a rarity, so I want to acknowledge it on the cast. So I have cried twice during your segment. Everything about that is, it's amazing how fresh.

[19:17] Meg: Exactly what I've been thinking, exactly what I've been thinking the past few days. This didn't happen in the '50s. This happened relatively recently.

[19:28] Jessica: Well, and I think growing up, you know, as teenagers, I mean, that was from 19, you know, that was our high school. It was our entire teenage years and then into our twenties in the '90s. That's our entire sensibility. And while I can't say off the top of my head, there's just one specific thing that is calling me back to that. It's, it's everything. Even in our sheltered Upper East Side lives, you couldn't turn around without having some contact with tragedy. And I look back on it, and I think I have some anecdotes that I will not share about people in my life who were aware that someone who might have been behaving badly or very tense, whatever, they were that way because they had AIDS. And the response was, well, you know, good behavior is good behavior, that kind of thing. It was so like, suck it up. You know, you have this for a reason.

[20:39] Meg: Oof.

[20:40] Jessica: You know, and it's horrible.

[20:43] Meg: Sorry.

[20:44] Jessica: No, it's not sorry. It's terrible times show you who people are.

[20:49] Meg: Right.

[20:50] Jessica: And is shows Mother Hale as one end of the spectrum and, you know, the Ronald Reagans of the world as another. I was just thinking, as you described it, I'm wondering if his Hollywood life made him susceptible to Elizabeth Taylor's protests to do the right thing.

[21:12] Meg: Absolutely and frankly, Elizabeth Glaser got in touch with him and they had a meeting. Why? Because of Hollywood contacts.

[21:20] Jessica: Right. Reagan, not a great legacy.

[21:25] Meg: Certainly not in respect to AIDS and many other things, too.

[21:28] Jessica: And many other things. That was really fascinating. So just to reiterate, the time period that your segment.

[21:33] Meg: I talked about'85 through '89.

[21:39] Jessica: '85 through '89.

[21:40] Meg: It's interesting what you were talking about with COVID. There is definitely to a lesser degree, but a judgey element to the whole thing. There are people - you're doing that and you shouldn't be doing that, and blah, blah, blah. But what was going on with AIDS was just that times, I don't even know, a million.

[22:00] Jessica: Immeasurable. Immeasurable. What I actually find really astonishing is people who get upset that other people are making the personal choice quietly to wear masks. And I'm like, very interesting. What's your fricking problem?

[22:18] Meg: Yeah, no, that's very strange.

[22:20] Jessica: That's what they want to do. Why are you taking this personally?

[22:23] Meg: That would be like, why are you wearing a condom? What kind of weirdo are you?

[22:28] Jessica: Exactly? And if you're taking it as a personal rebuke, what did you do that you are now feeling so terrible about? And just as a quick public service announcement, there is an uptick in COVID. I have been on planes quite a bit in the last six months, and I'm about to get on a flight again this month and I will be wearing a mask because I don't need to get COVID a third time. Actually, a fourth time, let's be honest, that third one was clearly COVID. So, yeah. Anyway, interesting.

[23:13] Meg: One more thing about Hart Island, an update. Oh, I wanted to tell you, too. It's 131 acres, because we talked about size last week.

[23:25] Jessica: Size matters.

[23:26] Meg: And Central Park is 840 acres. So that's the relative size.

[23:31] Jessica: Well, yes, and 92 acres for Battery Park City.

[23:34] Meg: Right.

[23:35] Jessica: So those are our numbers.

[23:36] Meg: And the island was once. It's been a whole bunch of things. You would have so much fun if you wanted to go deep on Hart Island history. But it was, not surprisingly, a penal colony, and as a result, it was run until very, very recently by the Department of Corrections. And that's why they were using Rikers Island inmates to do all the mass burials. But very recently, 2021, the city transferred the island to the parks department. And now the parks department is going to.

[24:14] Jessica: I read about this.

[24:15] Meg: Sorry, go ahead, begin giving access to people to visit the graves and also for nature walks. And it's been completely off limits and had a huge stigma around it forever. And now it's going to be more accessible. So that will be very interesting.

[24:34] Jessica: And what closure for people who have loved ones. Oh, absolutely.

[24:38] Meg: Please do go to this website, The Hart Island Project. It is beautiful. And they've got videos. Lots of artists have done, you know, interesting videos about people's discoveries of their loved ones and also the history of the island.

[24:55] Jessica: Tell me again, when did it start being used as a burial ground cemetery?

[24:59] Meg: Right after the Civil War. Got it. Lots of bodies.

[25:01] Jessica: I mean. Yeah, but from a historian's perspective, which I am not, but I pretend I am. Fascinating. Mm hmm.

[25:19] Meg: I promise, no babies next week.

[25:21] Jessica: I can't. I love you, and I think you're brilliant and you're so good at what you do, but you're going to have to bury me on Hart's Island if you do another baby story.

[25:33] Meg: No. No more babies for a while.

[25:34] Jessica: Thank you. But great job.

[25:37] Meg: Thanks.

[25:37] Jessica: Great job. And, you know, weeping over here, so great job. But I'm going to take us from the depths to the heights to a different kind of depths. Okay. I have a really, really close friend who came to stay with me a couple weeks ago with her darling daughter, who's getting ready to go off to college, is actually in college freshman year right now.

[26:00] Meg: Cool.

[26:01] Jessica: And they come to the city every summer and go see musicals, which I'm always kind of like. Mm hmm. That's nice for you. Enjoy Times Square. Not my bag. Well, boy, was I wrong, because our aforementioned BFF of the podcast, Nick, speaking of all things supporting AIDS research and helping people who have AIDS, Nick has been involved in Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS for quite some time, and as a result, will have the occasional spare ticket and took me to see Here Lies Love. Fun. Have you seen it yet?

[26:42] Meg: No.

[26:43] Jessica: So there I was like, uh huh, musical. Like, the only thing that got me there was that it's David Byrne and Fatboy Slim. And I was like, that's gonna be cool, but stupid. Unbelievable production. Wow. Cast incredible. It looked amazing. They had the audience engaged in the most wackadoodle ways. You can read about it. I don't need to give you a full rundown of what the show is about. As a spectacle, it is 8000% worth seeing. There are even a few moments where Ninoy Aquino, the actor who plays Ninoy Aquino, is dressed in a way that is so reminiscent of David Byrne in his earlier days and there's a song that he sings where you're like, well, Fatboy Slim clearly went to the bathroom and let David Byrne just have at it with this particular song because it was like, straight out of Stop Making Sense. It was so much fun and so great. And as we were leaving, Nick and I from the theater, the incredibly annoyingly named the Broadway Theatre. Cause try to look that up for an address. I was like, whatever it used to be. I don't know if it was the Neil Simon Theater, where the hell it was. It was annoying to find it. And there we were in a Lyft or an Uber whatever, and the driver's like, where is it? We're like, it's Broadway Theate.

[28:14] Meg: And he thought you were an idiot.

[28:16] Jessica: Yes. And he would not have been wrong. We finally had to look up the address, and just to cement why I hate Times Square so very much, we then had to get out and walk to the theater because nothing was moving in Times Square.

[28:32] Meg: Absolutely.

[28:33] Jessica: And I'm not against walking, obviously. Well, not obviously. I'm not the most physical fitness active person, but I could handle walking two blocks. That was not a problem. But it was just annoying.

[28:48] Meg: Gotcha.

[28:49] Jessica: Really super annoying. But here's my one criticism of the musical, which is probably not going to shock you. The story, the history, the background on why things were the way they were exactly and then how things wrapped up in a particular time period and what the aftermath was - missing.

[29:11] Meg: Okay.

[29:12] Jessica: And so I walked out thinking, the children. Think of the children. Well, they don't know what really happened. So I'm now going to talk about our dear friend still living, Imelda Marcos and her time in New York City in the '80s.

[29:32] Meg: Fun. Shoes.

[29:33] Jessica: Yes. No. Right?

[29:38] Meg: Oh. That's all I remember.

[29:40] Jessica: Hold that thought. Okay, so here are a couple of things that would be really good to know before I launch into my take on Imelda Marcos and her shenanigans, as detailed in Here Lies Love. The Marcoses were not really great people.

[29:57] Meg: No, we knew that.

[30:00] Jessica: Yeah. You know, they liked to embezzle funds and kill political opponents and declare martial law so that a third presidential term could happen. Does that sound familiar to anybody? Put a pin in that.

[30:17] Meg: Okay.

[30:18] Jessica: Okay. And they killed Ninoy Aquino very famously as he was getting off a plane, knowing full well that he would be killed.

[30:27] Meg: Did they shoot him?

[30:28] Jessica: Yeah, they shot him. He was wearing a bulletproof vest. They shot him in the head. As he was descending to the tarmac in Manila. The People Power Revolution, it became very clear that the Marcoses were being deposed and he had to get the hell out of dodge. Who saved him?

[30:46] Meg: Oh, no.

[30:47] Jessica: Our friend Ronald Reagan.

[30:49] Meg: Of course he did.

[30:50] Jessica: They were given asylum. They went to Hawaii. Off they ran. And Imelda, not one to be held down and genuinely a disco queen, said, I'm going to New York.

[31:04] Meg: So she didn't go to Hawaii.

[31:06] Jessica: She did.

[31:06] Meg: Okay. But then she came to New York.

[31:08] Jessica: She came to New York. And let's not forget, just for the telling of this story, that one of the very, very bad, bad things that the Marcoses were accused of, and, in fact did, was they diverted, that's a nice way to put it, American aid to their country, into their wallets. Yuck. So they had something like around $10 billion that they were playing with. Imelda, who was a beauty queen, kind of a failed beauty queen. Let's be honest, she didn't get that far. But to quote Alicia Bridges, she liked the nightlife. She liked to boogie. Okay. And in the '70s, she had visited New York City quite a bit and had created a network of like minded people. And when I say like minded people, I mean people who like to party, people who liked excess, and people who liked sponging off of people with $10 billion, no matter where they come from. And this is before they were deposed.

[32:13] Meg: Got it.

[32:14] Jessica: So I'm going to give us a little background on New York in the '70s and some of the players who decided to support Imelda Marcos. So do you know how we started this podcast, episode one, and I talked about Channel J.

[32:29] Meg: Yes.

[32:29] Jessica: Well, we're going to talk about it again.

[32:31] Meg: Okay.

[32:31] Jessica: So on Channel J, in addition to porn, there were a couple of people who had weirdo talk shows. They were almost like proto TikTok/Instagram. They just liked to have a platform and do whatever. And one of these was Nikki Haskell. Do you remember this name?

[32:50] Meg: No.

[32:50] Jessica: Nikki Haskell was sort of a social-, he was socialite adjacent and liked to portray herself as such. She was like, she came from money, then the money went away, and then she married money, and she loved, again, the nightlife. And so she had this cable talk show where she would interview other denizens of the nightlife, and she slowly, slowly built her way up into being a socialite, such as, you can be a socialite without actually being from one of the Mrs. Astor's 500.

[33:24] Meg: Like a new kind, new breed of socialite.

[33:27] Jessica: Self made, self defined socialite. But she had some interesting things under her belt. She was a stockbroker when there were not many, if any, female stockbrokers. She was a diet guru. She sold an exercise contraption, like, remember the uh - Thigh master? Yes, yes, yes. It was like that, but she called it a gym in a bag. Okay, right, so Nikki had some moves, right? Nikki Haskell was someone who Imelda Marcos would call on, because when she wanted a playmate. Cause she didn't have actual friends, as is frequently the case, she had playmates who she would call upon and Nikki Haskell was one of them. She would say, hey, I want you to come with me to go to Cartier, and let's go get some Christmas presents for me and you and some other people and Nikki would go. And at the time, this is in the '80s, the Marcoses had, when they fled, they came to the United States, they came to the mainland, and when they came to New York, they stayed at The Waldorf Astoria. That was where they would hang out. And, you know, as I said, they fled in '86. So imagine The Waldorf Hotel in 1986, still very lavish, not run down. They also bought a mansion on 66th Street. This lavish mansion, which was only used for parties.

[34:49] Meg: Okay.

[34:49] Jessica: Where she installed a disco ball, would sing karaoke fun way into the night with her friends. George Hamilton. Yes.

[34:58] Meg: Of course. It's like a Regine's crowd, it sounds like.

[35:02] Jessica: Yes. She liked to collect movie stars, heads of state. She even tried to collect the Pope at one point. Is he a partier? Not really, no, but Imelda went for it.

[35:13] Meg: The Pope doing karaoke on 66th Street. Hard to imagine.

[35:16] Jessica: I know, but she was hitting the international party circuit with.

[35:20] Meg: He is international.

[35:21] Jessica: Exactly. With vim and vigor and faith. And I suppose that's where the Pope comes in. She had faith that this was going to work out. And because she was such a good time gal, she was kind of irresistible to people who were not that interested in what was going on underneath the surface. She would hang out with the Queen of Thailand, Paloma Picasso, Clare Boothe Luce. Malcolm Forbes even threw her a bash on his yacht. Lee Radziwell, daughter of Jackie.

[35:52] Meg: Sister.

[35:53] Jessica: What did I say?

[35:54] Meg: Daughter.

[35:54] Jessica: I'm sorry, sister. Andy Warhol recorded in his diary that at one of these lavish parties she just decided to sing twelve songs. Imelda just gave, like. Was she good? Not terrible.

[36:08] Meg: Is that what Here Lies Love is about, singing?

[36:12] Jessica: No. No. Well, yes. I mean, it highlights how much she liked to party, which is why it's set, the setting is essentially a disco that gets remade and remade and remade with moving sets and all of that kind of thing. But she's kind of like Florence Foster Jenkins, but with a better voice. She was literally the last person to leave any party. And Warhol, in a move, in an atypical move, because he liked to be so removed from everything, actually reported to the New York Post that one of these parties that he attended was the best party he'd ever been to in his life.

[36:49] Meg: All right.

[36:50] Jessica: Right? To The Washington Post he says this, "She was living the good life. She was having an amazing time." What else was in the mansion other than a disco ball? Persian carpets, a 1763 harpsichord, gold bathroom fixtures.

[37:06] Meg: Ugh. What's with gold bathroom fixtures? It's so impractical.

[37:11] Jessica: That's the point.

[37:12] Meg: But a bathroom should be practical.

[37:14] Jessica: I think that when you are really dedicated to ostentatious wealth, isn't part of it, saying, it's so impractical that I can afford people to make it practical for me.

[37:26] Meg: It seems gross to me.

[37:27] Jessica: It is disgusting.

[37:29] Meg: I don't know if we've talked about this before, but I know Trump on his yacht, I remember, had not gold plated, but gold silverware that couldn't be used because it's not firm enough.

[37:40] Jessica: Right.

[37:41] Meg: It will not stab the food.

[37:43] Jessica: That's freaking awesome. She had works by Picasso, Van Gogh. Nikki Haskell says that the top floor was a dance space, complete with disco ball, where she often partied with Franco Rossellini, father of Isabella Rossellini, but also Adnan Khashoggi.

[38:02] Meg: Oh, he keeps showing up.

[38:03] Jessica: He does keep showing up. She was also partying with Donald Trump and Ivana Trump. Of course. And why? Partly because.

[38:14] Meg: Same moral code?

[38:14] Jessica: They were great - well, yes, and they were great friends of Nikki Haskell.

[38:19] Meg: Okay.

[38:20] Jessica: Who became a hub for the social life of Imelda Marcos in New York City. Nikki Haskell, just as a quick aside, made a lot of major, major mistakes in New York City starting in 2015. New York City is essentially a liberal town. Nikki Haskell, who met Donald Trump on the dance floor at Studio 54 and thought he was dashing, not only did she vote for him, she supported him, she threw parties for him. And even after he was elected and things started to go very sour in New York City, tons of protests, she just kept supporting him. And her social circle, the social circle that she had traded on, that was her key to Imelda Marcos and people like her dwindled and dwindled and dwindled. So did that deter her? No.

[39:12] Meg: Question. What Nikki brought to the table for these people was not money? What she brought to the table were just her social connections?

[39:24] Jessica: Correct. And that her Nikki Haskell show on Channel J was a way for people to even feel more fabulous. Remember how camcorders had the big light up at the top? And those party videos? Everyone looks like they're in a police spotlight. She had one of those and would have a videographer with her at these parties. And it was just another way to be and feel fabulous. She created that.

[39:51] Meg: I mean Channel J and fabulous, hard to combine those two, but I see what you're saying.

[39:58] Jessica: She was a social climber, and she figured out -

[40:01] Meg: Is she still with us?

[40:02] Jessica: Yes. She figured out how to make herself appear valuable to these people. New York Magazine called Nikki Haskell the Queen of Comp. Why? Because she liked to get freebies in exchange for everything that she did. Like, if there was a party with a gift bag, you could find Nikki Haskell right in there. But this is the level of person that Imelda Marcos relied on. Let's just have a quick moment. So it's 1986. They come to the United States. They come to New York, and they have all of this money. Now, think about this. They have been kicked out of Manila, and yet they have all this money. Now, how does that usually happen?

[40:42] Meg: Well, they had offshore accounts.

[40:43] Jessica: Yes, they did. They also made a really fascinating choice. They decided to, quote, "hide their money" in New York City. Where? That's right. How? But where is the much better question. They went ahead and bought four massive buildings.

[41:04] Meg: Okay.

[41:05] Jessica: In New York City. Their addresses were 40 Wall Street, one of the biggest office buildings downtown, 200 Madison Avenue, 730 5th Avenue and Herald Center in Herald Square.

[41:21] Meg: Whoa.

[41:21] Jessica: These are massive, massive buildings. Eventually, there was a lawsuit. It was claimed that Imelda Marcos owned these buildings outright as gifts from her husband. All right. I'm going to read an article from 1986 from The New York Times. A New York real estate executive testified before a house panel today that Imelda Marcos, the wife of the Philippine president, told him in 1984 that her main concern about four New York City buildings was to realize, or, quote, "pull out $70 million by 1987 from the buildings" which he understood she owned. He also testified that the president of New York Land Company, Joseph Bernstein, had told him that the New York properties were gifts from President Ferdinand E. Marcos to his wife. The matter of owning these buildings became an issue in the presidential election campaign in the Philippines, which is the presidential election campaign that he lost that then forced him to flee, where Mr. Marcos and his family have been accused of corruption. Some American legislators have openly questioned whether the Marcos family may have diverted american aid funds into investments. New York Land or its affiliates manage the four properties that I've already mentioned. Mr. Politus, or Politis, who was one of the building managers, said that Mrs. Marcos said that she constantly wanted the buildings to be kept in tip top shape for the resale of the buildings. So they were getting aid for their country, putting it in their pockets from the United States, and then buying real estate. Real estate in New York City. Exactly. And then, in some bizarre way, trying to evade tax implications or the illusion of any wrongdoing by making them gifts to Imelda because she wasn't the elected official.

[43:21] Meg: Got it. No, that feels very weak.

[43:25] Jessica: Yes. So much of the.

[43:27] Meg: They should have come up with a better alibi. Honestly.

[43:29] Jessica: Again, it's about the hubris of people who do these kinds of things, like.

[43:33] Meg: They gave about 15 minutes of thought into how to cover that up.

[43:36] Jessica: And the number. And the reason that I set this up with the Nikki Haskells of the world and the Trumps and all of those names is that those people's bread and butter is their appearance, their look. They don't really dig that deep into the shittiness of what's around them.

[43:55] Meg: Right? Yeah. Adnan Khashoggi gets to hang out with people, which is crazy.

[44:01] Jessica: Precisely. So much of the information about the ownership and financing of the properties is hidden behind layers of offshore corporations. Of course. Mr. Breslin, not Jimmy, testified that a shareholder and lender of $25 million to New York Land, the building that owns 40 Wall Street, was a Panamanian corporation Excellencia Investments Inc. Mr. Breslin said the accountants for New York Land had declined to approve the company's financial statements in 1984 because the $25 million loan could not be confirmed. Although it is not illegal for foreigners to purchase real estate in the United States, the accumulation of wealth necessary to finance large acquisitions could violate various Philippine laws. Corazon Aquino, who was Mr. Marcos opponent in the Presidential race, has made charges of corruption by the President a central issue in the campaign. So I stand corrected. This was in 1985, not 1986, because '86 is when she won and he left. So that's the world of the Marcoses. That's just like a really tiny, tiny snapshot. While the musical was really great, it lets you know that strange things were afoot at the Circle K with these two. And there's a lot of accusation of wrongdoing, but it doesn't really say what they did. There's one mention of how she built an arts center in which 169 workers are buried in the cement because they died while erecting the building and there were no safety measures. Mass grave. Yes, mass grave. So that's connection number one. Iie in. Tie in number two is Reagan. New York City in '86 specifically.

[45:46] Meg: Okay.

[45:47] Jessica: I'm not gonna say the '80s. I'm saying '86 specifically. It's the AIDS, Marcos, Reagan tie in. You know, so much was made of Imelda Marcos when. The shoes. So I don't know if you guys if you know what happened, but I always thought, you know, that she was sort of like, happily showing off the shoes and her Marie Antoinette insanity, right?

[46:13] Meg: That's the impression I got. She was proud of her shoes, right?

[46:15] Jessica: Here's what actually happened. When they were ousted and Corazon Aquino won the election, the widow of the man who they murdered, got it, on the tarmac. They fled, and they fled without most of their belongings. They got the hell out of town. They had tons and tons of money to re-buy whatever they wanted, but they left their palace with its contents intact. So the revolutionaries went in, and they saw what was going on, and they recorded it, and they started letting it be known internationally what was there.

[46:51] Meg: Shaming her for the shoes.

[46:52] Jessica: Shaming. And what's really interesting.

[46:54] Meg: How many pairs of shoes?

[46:55] Jessica: 3000 pairs of shoes.

[46:56] Meg: Good lord.

[46:57] Jessica: And what's really interesting is that by the time it was possible to go in and, like, get the stuff, the shoes had rotted away with mold and worms.

[47:10] Meg: Yuck.

[47:10] Jessica: And so those shoes could not even be given to the poor.

[47:17] Meg: It's probably for the best, though. I mean, they, like, stupidly high heeled shoes. Not useful.

[47:22] Jessica: No, I'm teasing. But could you imagine? You're, like, just, like, running through some slum with, like, her white, her legendary white fur coat, some shoulder pads, and her little tiny shoes with very high heels. You know, you talk about hubris. Here's another little bit that I thought was amazing. So there's a documentary about her on Netflix called The Kingmaker, which apparently is fantastic and now I'm going to watch. We've had episodes where we talk about missing art and people doing bad things because they want nice things. Right? During the filming and then the broadcast of this documentary, a few eagle eyed art enthusiasts and professionals noticed that there is a missing Picasso hanging above her couch. I love it. Yeah. So at 92, this documentary was made two years ago, but at 92, still alive, Imelda, unrepentant, living in luxury, flaunting what she's got. Her son is now President of the Philippines.

[48:30] Meg: Oh, my lord. I did not know that. Did she have to give the Picasso back?

[48:35] Jessica: No. Girl's got it. Girl's gonna die with that Picasso. It may have to go back after she's dead, right? Because someone will finally care enough to make case about it. But, yeah.

[48:46] Meg: Where is she living now?

[48:48] Jessica: On July 21 of this year, because of the musical, this article was written. This is in Women's Wear Daily, of all places. You know, she was elected to the House of Representatives in the Philippines. She returned four times. Her final term ended in 2016, and in 2018, she was found guilty of seven counts of graft in the Philippines and sentenced to a minimum of 42 years in prison. She appealed her case and is currently out on bail as she awaits another trial. So she is 99% in the Philippines. Crazy. So Imelda, the upshot of this little report is loved the musical, hate the Marcoses and she took New York City by storm and was brilliant about manipulating all of the leeches and hangers on to create the party that she so desperately, desperately wanted to surround her 24/7. And when she wasn't going to a club, the club came to her.

[49:51] Meg: So our tie ins are so far Reagan.

[50:07] Jessica: Reagan Just being Reagan and shitting on AIDS patients and providing a safe haven for really bad folks.

[50:17] Meg: Yeah, I feel like there's something else too, but anyway.

[50:19] Jessica: The way that I frame our two stories is it is the ultimate in the low lives who lived high lives and the normal people who were forced into desperation all in a very short period of time altogether on the same island. It's two ends of the spectrum that are heartbreaking, each in their own fucked up way.

[50:43] Meg: This is good. This is good.

[50:45] Jessica: This is what they have. This is what they have. You work with it.