Culture
Lower East Side
Explore the vibrant and chaotic history of New York City's Lower East Side during the 1970s, a time marked by artistic rebellion and cultural transformation. This episode delves into the lives of...
Lower East Side
Culture •
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Interactive Transcript
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New York City during the 1970s was a beautiful ravage slag.
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The
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Impoverished and neglected after suffering from decades of abuse and battery.
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She's tongue of sewage, sex, rotting vision day old divers.
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She leaked from every poor.
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No wave was the waste product of taxi driver, a type of square, the sun of sand, the black
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out of 77.
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The desperate need to violently rebel against the complacency of a zombie nation dumbed down
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by sitcoms and disco.
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They were howling with delight, laughing like lunatics in the madhouse that was New York City.
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Thrilled to be rubbing up against their freaks and other outcasts to somehow, for some
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unknowable reason.
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It all decided to run to lands and all at once.
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Stream their bloody heads off.
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This is a show about a very special place, a very special time, and some very special
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people.
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So much happened, so much began, a New York's Lower East Side.
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Those buildings are still there.
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You know this neighborhood from the Dove of the House.
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I mean, every corner I've ever grand, by a water of like preference, you know, because
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it was some, you know, you really rather not to go to that was like sort of like, you know,
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last resort.
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So where there was a hole, a big hole in a wall right there.
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Basically like a car-sized hole in a wall, you'd step into what abandoned space.
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I didn't know any spots down there.
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I mean, people would take me, of course, yeah.
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But it was not my regular.
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My regular was here at executive of a radio for a while.
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For a while I had to go.
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I think that.
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Yeah.
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The Lower East Side was in many ways the cradle of New York.
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The Lower East Side was in many ways the cradle of New York, where new arrivals first
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settled, built communities and later moved on, only to be replaced by others.
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In the New York City of the 70s, nearly bankrupt, riddled with corruption, the Lower East Side
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particularly Alphabet City was left to fend for itself.
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Huge swaths of the abandoned, ruined, or simply empty.
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Much of it became an open-air supermarket for drugs.
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Whole blocks taken over by organized drug gangs.
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Rents were cheap, and the neighborhood started to attract a newer, highly energized and creative
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group of people who wanted to make things.
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Music, poetry, movies, and art.
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It seemed at the time everybody was a star.
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And for a while at least, that it was a golden time.
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But it was dangerous.
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You live down here, you have to be tough and talented and often very quick.
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Now things are different.
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Very different.
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Everybody together, ready? One, two, three.
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Pick those feet up, six inches at a hold.
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Bring that arm over, bend the wrist, let's go.
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Everybody clear?
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I can't hear you.
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Yeah!
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Okay, three, one, two, three. Go.
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Stand up, hold your back up.
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Stand up, hold your back up.
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Stand up, hold your back up.
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Stand up, hold your back up.
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Stand up, hold your back up.
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Stand up, hold your back up.
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So I mean, this is pretty much some of the last remnants of what the Lower East Side kind of used to be like, you know.
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Good old school, no elevator.
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So you're living this building?
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No, this wasn't the building I lived in.
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This is a squat, though, that actually became legal.
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I was actually in that building right there.
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When I lived in it, it was, you know, we had no windows, no front doors, you know, you'd find a door in the street.
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You'd put it up and chain it up yourself, you know.
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No running water, I used to bathe in the fire hydrant in front of the building.
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And I used to sleep with my pit bulls, so rats wouldn't get too close to me at night, you know.
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You actually grew up here?
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What was that like growing up here, being a little kid here?
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My main problem growing up down here was that I lived on a gang block.
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The gang on my block was called the Hitman.
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And, you know, they were no joke, right?
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And I remember they'd be hanging out on the stoop on the church across the street, smoking dust,
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all of them with their golf clubs and 007 knives, and everybody'd be listening to, of all things, craft work.
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Trans-Euro Express.
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They'd be out there screaming, we're going to kill the next, but that comes out of that building.
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And I'm laying there.
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I'm thinking, why I gotta go to school tomorrow, man.
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I was never a violent person.
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You know, Christ, I was raised by hippies.
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But I was thrown into a crazy environment where I had no choice but to fight my way through it.
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I always had a cue ball in a sock in my pocket.
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I'd split your head open quicker than you could say what but.
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And it did turn me into a bit of a problem as a teenager, you know.
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I would guess, wait a minute, I'd have to guess, I know.
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First time I saw you, you were famously that 12-year-old drummer in the stimulators.
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You're out in the band.
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Yeah, that was the only reason we were allowed to play at most of the clubs is because I had a relative who was basically my legal guardian.
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I need to get another egg cream. What do you get?
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Chocolate egg cream. Chocolate egg cream.
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Yeah, well, I'm not a one chocolate.
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I got PTSD, man.
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And it's like, I just feel like I'm seeing ghosts when I'm down here, man.
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I miss it though. I'll tell you as much as I've painted as this horror story, what you was.
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I loved it.
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You know, it'll always be a part of who I am.
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My man.
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Cheers.
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Right, Ray. Thanks for the egg cream.
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That is a super bad cream.
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They don't make them no better.
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Do you want to say something about what?
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I had assigned last, last words of Dutch shows.
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The out of it.
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You came here first as a writer, as a poet.
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New York, in your mind, was where the writer's life was.
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Yeah, well, it was just the place that had the most stimulation.
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Was music given in the back of your head or was poetry and writing?
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My model was Dylan Thomas there when I was a teenager.
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You know, so being a drunken womanizer.
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That was my ambition.
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You woke up in your own lifetime, opened up a paper and realized there's like a million kids
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and Britain dressing like me and cutting their hair like me.
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And you have this inadvertent tectonic effect on kids.
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Well, there was an inadvertent, but it was indirect.
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I mean, I wanted it to have that effect.
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Other bands who responded to the way I was doing things got famous
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so that it ended up having this huge impact and influence.
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When I first saw the picture of the sex festivals, I just had to laugh.
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That's a charitable interpretation of events.
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Malcolm Clarke came to New York and saw the boydoids and went back and built a boy band
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and said, you're going to dress like that guy.
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Yeah, I don't really like that in that way.
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I agree.
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I mean, I did a free, I never resented that, but it was funny and strange.
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Cheap rent brought a lot of people together.
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It wasn't just living spaces where there were venues where you could put whatever it was you did out there.
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CBGB didn't exist until we created it.
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I mean, we wouldn't propose that we be the house band there.
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And then you're then the boydoids.
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What were your expectations?
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I wanted everything that anybody starts a band wants,
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but I didn't even quite realize how weird and uncommercial I was.
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I thought what I was doing was really catchy.
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Do we over-romanticize that period?
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Was it special?
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I think the creation of the mythology of the 70s kind of began in the mid-90s.
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I can see what people who went there wish they were there,
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but it goes against all my instincts that think that way just because the idea is we didn't like what things were,
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so we decided to change them.
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Why are you here tonight?
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I guess we just interested to see what's going on.
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We saw a bed and I think it was New Yorker.
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The more or less, what was happening?
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Simple as that.
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How about you?
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It's a fascinating place.
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I must say.
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It's probably one of the most interesting places in New York,
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just simply the neon lights and the crowd here.
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It's all very interesting.
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Would you come here again?
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No.
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Ha-ha-ha-ha.
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Have you ever considered writing a dishy memoir?
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I mean, my god, it would be eight other pages long.
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I know why?
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Because so many people are still alive.
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I mean, people love you.
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Yeah.
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I have to say that.
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How can you say something mean about somebody who might be mean back at you?
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It's an industry.
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Are you kidding me?
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People ask, what was the like in the first hand you saw, Iggy?
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And I didn't see him.
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I heard the music from down the hall.
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I mean, I thought, this is the rock and roll.
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I always wanted to hear something that was this fierce
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and yet you could send you.
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There was a tune there.
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What I bought from a house in high school, I was immediately ostracized.
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Yeah.
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This was defining music and the normal people didn't like it.
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The Ramones met because they would pour out casts in a high school
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with five thousand people who liked one house.
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Right.
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Okay.
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They had it all figured out that they would sell as many records as the great record sellers would sell.
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And in a few years they would have so much money that they would retire.
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I never have to work here.
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Right.
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Especially with each other.
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That's what they had to stay on the road for another 25 years.
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Yes.
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Do you know where the greatest financial success has come from?
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Hey, let's go.
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Right.
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Song in football and soccer stadiums around the world, the Ramones and States are gathering in more money from five seconds than they were made in the...
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Is that the measure of greatness or eternity?
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It's one of them.
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So many people died.
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So many people didn't get recognized.
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Richard Hill still lived in the same apartment he lived in.
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20 years ago?
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It likes to move in New York.
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We got a good deal.
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The neighborhood got all better and around him.
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You know, Biggie was supposed to be the one who didn't make it most of them all.
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And he's still there the most dangerous.
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God sends us these signs that there are miracles.
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Don't give up, hope.
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What you believe is beautiful probably is not everyone will know it in time.
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I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, host of the Chasing Life Podcast.
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I'm actually getting very specific suggestions on things we can fix at the FDA.
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Dr. Marty McCary, earlier this year, he stepped into the role of FDA Commissioner.
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And there's no shortage of things that are broken to fix at the FDA.
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What does he want to reform?
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And how does he see the FDA's role at a time when science, politics, and public health are more entangled than ever before?
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Listen to Chasing Life, streaming now, wherever you get your podcasts.
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Music
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Okay, my name is Hugh Mackie.
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I moved over here in 81 and started this show in 86.
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When we opened this show up here, we were the only like business on a block.
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We were the only like real thing apart from just mayhem down here.
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Basically, it's been a one-mind show with one person helping me and we still fix old British bikes.
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We're really into it, but nowadays, there aren't so many people into it anymore and the supply of bikes is dwindling.
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It's gotten to the point now where I'm the only bad thing on a block.
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I'm now the mess, I'm now the noise, I'm the scruffy building.
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It's not that anymore, it's just not.
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I mean, it's super expensive restaurants which come and go every five years.
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High-heeled girls and pink coats on getting them fancy snitzel restaurants and they're standing on rats and they think that's cool.
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What they don't know is that before the restaurants were here, there weren't no rats.
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You know, these light-rich people are coming down here and standing on rats and think that's East Village and it never was.
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How hard was it to, if you're coming to New York, a section of New York that's completely broke, you are broke.
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It's going to be an artist and not just art, but fairly confrontational.
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How committed do you have to be to do that particularly at that time?
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I think that, contrary to it, it hasn't been that hard.
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I feel like I've been very fortunate to have got to stay alive here.
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And I have everything I need to look around us.
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It's a wonderful amusement park of good and bad ideas all happening at once.
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You know how people immigrate here to start a new life and to dream big?
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I felt like I needed to do that as well.
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Just like the way the people did at the turn of the century, you moved to New York to immigrate to a new land, to start a new life.
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And that's really what the Lower East Side is all about.
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You know, it was an extremely rare and wonderful time.
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I think only now do I realize how fortunate I was that I got to experience a neighborhood that had Jack Smith on First Avenue, that had the Living Theater, that had Jonas Meekas on Second Street.
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Who thrilled you back then? Who was doing stuff that you just thought?
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Holy shit, this is really incredible and inspiring.
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Well, gosh, luckily my friends that I was working with were very inspiring.
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I loved Jill Coleman's work.
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The Lower East Side at that time was a destination for me.
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There was something that compelled me to just be there and I would paint it, squeezing.
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Wow.
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Wow.
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Oh, yes, you were telling me about this guy.
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Yeah, and here, if you want to use this, it's beautiful.
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You know, all the paintings are novels, you know, so it's a dense story and the more that you look, the more that you learn.
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And it's in non-linear time, you know, like you're exploring at your own pace, whatever you want to look at.
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And someone else might start in a different place and it might tell a different story.
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The performance on at one point, you came to paint, or did you come to paint?
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No, I came to paint, but the paintings were like implosions where I was studying the world around me and myself inside and a performances became literal explosions.
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I learned violence from my old man.
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So I was angry, you know, when your house is on fire, you know, you don't repoetry and you don't, you know, sing a folk song, you know, you got to scream.
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I missed all the great art at the time. I came for heroin, I came for music. Other than that, I didn't live here.
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But man, a lot of people didn't make it and I remember I guess around 1980, you know, something is happening and no one knows what it is.
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A lot of that time existed my mind like a dream, like an opium dream.
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I have these people that I love that would just like drop out and fall out.
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I'm a little bit sad that it wasn't there. I wasn't present, you know, for them because I was too off in this other world.
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But for me, it was still something of great beauty to that time. You have Wall Street tycoons fighting for huge amounts of wealth and you have like bombs, you know, fighting over like pennies.
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And it has like a, you know, a primal bomb.
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Sport bus over, much surprise, special days.
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I've been coming since 1966 over 50 years.
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So everyone should come and I'll just keep on.
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I'm a little bit sad that it wasn't there.
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This is one of the places that Keith Haring and I would love to come here.
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Jean-Michel would join us and we would have good meals here on a regular and it was consistently the exact, you know, it's great when you can go to the place they have the exact same food.
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Come on, this is the same.
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It's still exactly the same.
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That's encouraging.
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Which is great, it's great. I mean, you know, even though there's a hotel, three doors away and high rises going up, you can still have a decent meal.
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You brought hip-hop culture to a very finite number of people, initially on a lowly side, you know, totally changed the world.
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Teenagers at that time were doing something interesting.
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So I wanted to find some people that would listen to these ideas.
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But that's what led me to the lowly side and to connect with.
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I guess you met Guaidan Brian and Ed O'Brien.
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Yeah.
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Glenn was key to it all because I would read his column in Interview Magazine and it was this brilliant.
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And I met him and he embraced me and invited me to be a part of TV Party, which was just underground.
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I really, really well, I watched it all the time.
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Hi and welcome to TV Party.
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Fred, why don't you tell us a little bit about what the Holy Land looks like.
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I want you to know that I've been to the Holy Land.
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And the Holy Land is so fucking, it's fucking, man, love, it's fucking.
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And through that connection is where I met all these people that listened to all these ideas I had.
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And that was David Bern, Chris Stein and Debbie Harry and so many amazing people that were just like, yeah, tell me more.
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What do you think?
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It's under celebrated about, you guys in particular, was your kindness.
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You were famously really, really supportive of the people you came up with, your contemporaries of people around you,
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who were doing as well, you know, let each other sleep with us for a second.
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It was nothing as fake.
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And I mean, it's in a good way.
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You were writing hits from the beginning.
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I mean, these were enduring songs that people are still listening to and hold up.
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I just think a lot of people had low expectations.
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You had a plan.
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Well, no, if we had a plan, we would have made more money.
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And I got so completely over by the industry as it were.
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We had a plan to survive.
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Yeah, we had a plan to keep going dog and leave.
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And I think the thing that was so attractive about that period was you weren't locked into one format or one form, you know.
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It was just everybody was doing everything.
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You would reduce the entirely revolutionary notion that street art was in fact really art.
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The painting that we did on the street was coming from a place that pop art came from as well, like popular culture, magazines, advertising, comics.
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And so some of the first people to buy paintings from Lee and Jean-Michel was Chris and Debbie from Lundy.
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And then they also commissioned me, Lee Kinyonis and Jean-Michel to do sets and art and participate in their music videos, some of them very first.
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You're supported work with that type of Freddie.
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I mean, look at the soundtrack to the whole world now. It's a tip-off.
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That connection, that crossover there, you had put considerable muscle and gravitas.
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I talked to all these record company guys and I'd say 98% of them told me it was a fact.
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It's not going to last.
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It's going to go away in five years.
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Yeah, you recorded a song that was usually...
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Well, I will say, you know, like we're I'm very proud of the fact that you know we created a format that didn't exist in rap until then.
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And that is that we wrote a song that had a rap in it.
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Yeah, those guys were sampling still.
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The rap rapping was all scratching and sampling.
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So we, you know, made it viably commercial.
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And then, you know, get another pre-shattering event, the wild stop.
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I had an idea that we could make a movie and show that this rapping, this dancing, and this DJing was one thing.
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So I was on a trip to Germany not long after the film had aired and I see these kids break this and I'm like, what the hell is going on?
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As I got closer, I noticed the moves the kids were doing with the exact same moves that the rock steady crew does in wild style.
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But I then knew that this was going to translate globally.
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I remember that film opening and that was a nuclear bomb.
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And it ended up being like the second highest grossing.
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Second to terms of endearment.
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Right.
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Many people think about now, but yeah, it did well.
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You gotta love that moment of corporate terror in the film industry when people are looking at the weekend grosses and psych.
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What's this?
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Who is this audience that did not appear in our metrics?
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Oh, the great, great experience.
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I came to the Lower East Side back in 1965.
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When I came here, the changes was already in motion.
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There was a heroin epidemic, beginning of the homeless epidemic, and the hours witnessing all these changes.
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That's the history of Lower East Side.
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Everybody has to go back and find themselves in Lower East Side.
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Probably every day or every week, just by walking through it.
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That's my connection to the neighborhood.
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That's the neighborhood connection to me.
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To photograph that before that change.
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To have that running history.
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My main thing now is to keep a running record.
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So I started for the photo gallery here.
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It's been history ever since.
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I'm still here.
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I survived.
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I'm still here.
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I'm still here.
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I'm still here.
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I'm still here.
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I'm still here.
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You started making films before you knew how to make films.
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Yeah, yeah.
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The oddball thing about it is knowing so little, being an amateur was so helpful.
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Who knew that you could hire a casting director?
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No, it was just like, hey you, play that.
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You play that, you know.
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It's one of our friends.
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Are you going to be around next Tuesday?
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I saw myself more as like experimental filmmaker.
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Like the good art films, for example.
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They were inspiring because I could say I could do that.
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I owe a lot to Analysts.
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No, I saw the foreigner.
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It was amazing.
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It was the whole scene.
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It was there.
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Everybody was there.
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It was really a big name.
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I got so charged up.
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I was sure I was going to make films.
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Your first film was a student film.
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My first film was a student film permanent vacation.
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They think people like myself are crazy.
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Because of the way I live.
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NYU Film School made a mistake.
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So I had a $12,000 budget for my first film.
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Which is enormous for the time.
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It's huge for me.
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But the root of the word amateur is the love of a form.
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And professional means you are doing it for money.
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I still hope that I consider myself an amateur for sure.
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What was the budget on your first film?
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Oh man.
spk_0
$12.
spk_0
$12.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
Well, it depends on what you call a first film.
spk_0
But blank generation was like $2,200.
spk_0
I started shooting bands.
spk_0
And it was more how do you shoot music with a silent camera, basically.
spk_0
And then Unmade Beds was like my first narrative film.
spk_0
It was like about $4,000.
spk_0
I think I made beds.
spk_0
Someone from the New York Times called it the cinematic equivalent of kindergarten scribbling.
spk_0
And Amos put that on his posters.
spk_0
New York Times.
spk_0
And that was the most like punk-ass move.
spk_0
So what do you think now when you walk around the neighborhood?
spk_0
You know, you used to paint some dudes to walk down back in the day.
spk_0
And now it's a projectile vomiting, frat boys with baseball caps on backwards.
spk_0
And does this give you a sinking feeling, make you angry, or are you just resigned?
spk_0
I wish I was on real estate.
spk_0
That's for sure.
spk_0
The thing that I always tell myself is look at the history of New York City.
spk_0
And it's always about hustling and change.
spk_0
Change.
spk_0
And if you want it to stay the same, man, you get the wrong historical spot because there
spk_0
used to be a Native American trading post on the tip of Manhattan.
spk_0
It's not Wall Street, you know?
spk_0
I just don't want to go out in the streets.
spk_0
No more.
spk_0
I just don't want to go out in the streets.
spk_0
No more.
spk_0
You can't stay the people they give me.
spk_0
They give me the creep.
spk_0
Anymore.
spk_0
spk_0
Any more.
spk_0
Any more.
spk_0
Any more.
spk_0
Any more.
spk_0
Any more.
spk_0
Any more.
spk_0
Any more.
spk_0
spk_0
Any more.
spk_0
Any more.
spk_0
Any more.
spk_0
Any more.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
You want to come in for a minute?
spk_0
Yeah, sure.
spk_0
I love to see creeps.
spk_0
I'd be interested to look at your dope bags.
spk_0
Yeah, here's some.
spk_0
I got this guy who was a bank robber.
spk_0
And he was going to jail.
spk_0
He hooked me up with this.
spk_0
This is medi-aid.
spk_0
Oh, wow.
spk_0
Air mail.
spk_0
Air mail.
spk_0
Yeah, with 12th Street.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
I'm going to buy a little bit more glasses on for this.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
It's a treasure.
spk_0
Do you know why I remember poison?
spk_0
Poison.
spk_0
You must remember.
spk_0
Poison, yes, of course.
spk_0
Evidence.
spk_0
Or the psycho.
spk_0
I remember all of those.
spk_0
Did you ever do a hell-raiser?
spk_0
No, I don't remember ever.
spk_0
Toilet.
spk_0
It is.
spk_0
Classic, right?
spk_0
You know, you knew you were doing something bad.
spk_0
When you bought a product called Toilet
spk_0
and, you know, shot it in your armor.
spk_0
Oh, man.
spk_0
Memories.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
I mean, basically, your reputation is the Godfather Archivist
spk_0
of all things Lowery's side.
spk_0
You were here pointing your camera at stuff since the early 80s.
spk_0
I probably have one of the largest inner-city photograph collections
spk_0
of anybody.
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I used to know everybody that went by.
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That neighborhood thing is, like, really important to me.
spk_0
So I photographed the Puerto Rican's and Dominican's
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drag queens from the Pyramid Club.
spk_0
Basically, the whole hardcore scene in 87.
spk_0
I was more interested like the eccentric people, the unique people.
spk_0
You were at the Battle of Tomkin Square Park,
spk_0
which is sort of the Getty's bird of the Lowery's side.
spk_0
I remember it had essentially become clogged with nodding junkies.
spk_0
Right.
spk_0
Homeless people would set up a permanent camp.
spk_0
It was dangerous.
spk_0
It was genuinely dangerous.
spk_0
When the police came down and decided to clean the park,
spk_0
the question is, who won?
spk_0
Well, in the beginning, we did.
spk_0
They have to remember,
spk_0
you have to remember, in 1988,
spk_0
they couldn't close a 10-and-a-half-acre square park in Lowery's side.
spk_0
That was 450 ride cop.
spk_0
Torses, Halicom, they couldn't do it.
spk_0
Yeah, maybe we could do it.
spk_0
We don't have to win, man.
spk_0
They got 9 Philippines down there.
spk_0
It's so fun.
spk_0
There were big bomb fires, middle of the avenue,
spk_0
buses couldn't come down, cars didn't know anything.
spk_0
You were on the news a lot.
spk_0
I mean, you were the most despised man.
spk_0
Yes.
spk_0
I mean, NYPD, you were not their favorite photographer.
spk_0
Let's put it that way.
spk_0
This went on for four years.
spk_0
There are multiple riots, hundreds of arrests.
spk_0
Four years here, a real solid conflict.
spk_0
The cost of NC got bored of that.
spk_0
I think this was the beginning of a sort of police state mentality in America.
spk_0
I remember talking square after the police fence that off.
spk_0
It was in a lot of people's minds the end of an era.
spk_0
And yeah, when they cleared off the drugs,
spk_0
a lot of people say, hey, great, we're now going to have a neighborhood
spk_0
and everything's going to be safe.
spk_0
And then in came the gentrification.
spk_0
So the whole concept of America is being wiped out
spk_0
because you can't pull yourself up by the bootstraps anymore
spk_0
because you can't get in the game.
spk_0
Gentrification is affected the whole city.
spk_0
You have to now make a huge amount of money to be here.
spk_0
You know, they got skyscrapers in Midtown
spk_0
that are sold millions of dollars apartments
spk_0
and everybody lives in and they're empty.
spk_0
I live in one of those big empty buildings with absentee owners.
spk_0
Is that all that's going to be left in New York?
spk_0
Yes.
spk_0
New York, there was always something that brought it back.
spk_0
But once you fill it with the corporate world,
spk_0
it's never going back.
spk_0
So we turned to corner that we will never go back again.
spk_0
And so it's over.
spk_0
It's over.
spk_0
It's over.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
spk_0
You know, I have my eye on the octopus.
spk_0
Okay. Then I'm going to go straight into the...
spk_0
Straight. You're going to go straight.
spk_0
You're finally going straight.
spk_0
Oh my God. I'm impressed.
spk_0
Can you verify exactly what straight means?
spk_0
If I go. No way, honey.
spk_0
Even when you're straight and not straight.
spk_0
You're going to go straight into the market.
spk_0
spk_0
You're going to go straight into the market.
spk_0
spk_0
Did you expect to make a living from that artwork?
spk_0
Of course not.
spk_0
I just was happy I didn't have to suck into that rainy and shoestwar.
spk_0
I just was happy I didn't have to suck into that rainy and shoestwar.
spk_0
First of all, I thought I would come to New York to do spoken word.
spk_0
But spoken word didn't really exist.
spk_0
So I started 10 HG's in the church.
spk_0
I had to really make the most kiddieous yet precise DNA possibly could
spk_0
as a tantrum against all the music and all those society.
spk_0
There were a lot of freakish never could have happened at any other time.
spk_0
It seems to me bands who had already made audience.
spk_0
As you did to it, you could basically say, I am a rock star.
spk_0
Well, I'm a rock star.
spk_0
I'm a rock star.
spk_0
No, no. First of all, I never said I was a star.
spk_0
No, but I mean not by word, but by deed and deportation.
spk_0
We have great art ways.
spk_0
First of all, I'm not a star.
spk_0
I'm not an icon. That might be your, your, my family.
spk_0
You walked in with club. People do who you are.
spk_0
I don't walk into any place thinking I'm a star. I walked in thinking I had shit to do.
spk_0
But I wouldn't say I was a catalyst. I said I was a cattle prod.
spk_0
To get people to do shows, booking shows, curating shows, it's just what I do.
spk_0
It's like, let's go. Let's do it.
spk_0
And when people would ask me to do things, they'd be like, yeah, what I do.
spk_0
And of course, people were beautiful doing things because they had to do it.
spk_0
Not because of any other grand idea.
spk_0
So what made you happy back then?
spk_0
Did you have any happy moments?
spk_0
Happiness was not the goal. Satisfaction was the goal, as it still is.
spk_0
My anger is on global level. It's never had a personal level. I'm very happy.
spk_0
I'm happy to have I had to pose with you tonight, my dear.
spk_0
Thank you very much for inviting me.
spk_0
Good?
spk_0
Perfect.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
When was the last time you had something this good in your mouth?
spk_0
I know you eat well, but this is like it.
spk_0
That's what a while. This is pretty incredible.
spk_0
Why are you here tonight?
spk_0
To see the dead boys.
spk_0
Why?
spk_0
Because they're great.
spk_0
How do you know?
spk_0
Because I...
spk_0
How do you want to run down, Anne?
spk_0
Did you throw the...
spk_0
Yeah, they did. They was my present. I'm a launch. They do a song called I Need Launch. I'm Lydia Launch.
spk_0
Why did you throw that?
spk_0
What was it? What was it?
spk_0
They were used tampons, genuinely used new ones.
spk_0
Why did I give them to them? Because they're going to eat them the second set.
spk_0
You have featured prominently in many of the best films of the era.
spk_0
Most of which sucks.
spk_0
I was trying to be a reflection of the reality at the time.
spk_0
This is why I made the films I made especially with Richard Kirk.
spk_0
Just drop me off. Where are you taking me anyway?
spk_0
Uh-oh.
spk_0
So we did this horribly violent film called Finger that was based on real things that had happened to me.
spk_0
It was not glamorous. It was not pretty.
spk_0
It was offensive, but I'm trying to work out my psychosexual problems.
spk_0
Because I know I'm not alone in them by making films and speeches that will address the situation that I know other people suffer from.
spk_0
Okay, this is a film very influential, far beyond the imaginance of the time.
spk_0
We didn't think that when we did it. We didn't give a shit. We just wanted to make a film and get it out there.
spk_0
Because we had to do something because we were burning and our blood was on fire.
spk_0
Looking back, was it all that? Was it a golden period?
spk_0
Are you nostalgic?
spk_0
No.
spk_0
I am golden. It's always a golden period.
spk_0
We have a golden piece of asparagus.
spk_0
So do you have any sense of...
spk_0
No.
spk_0
Those are the...
spk_0
I doubt. Those were the bad old days, baby.
spk_0
You try living up pizza and money, beauty.
spk_0
You try giving hand jobs under the table to take your first band of Europe.
spk_0
You want to go back to that? You go back to that.
spk_0
How were you living? I know the same hand of mouth.
spk_0
So no set of mentality. No nostalgia at all.
spk_0
I'm doing too much shit all the time. I still have shit to do.
spk_0
Why am I booing when I've just been on tour for my tour for the next time? I'm not stopping.
spk_0
Youth, when you want to go through that again? Or is it a little bit overrated?
spk_0
Don't I look good for my age?
spk_0
No, yeah. Well then, what do you want for me?
spk_0
Was it worth it?
spk_0
Well, the right kid, the better I taste. What can I say? It's like wine, baby.
spk_0
Did something special happen then? Or am I just...
spk_0
My whole life is special because I'm still alive doing what I want to do with who I want to do it with.
spk_0
To me, I'm not living in the past because I'm living in the present.
spk_0
It's in New York, it used to it. It has never changed.
spk_0
And I'm gold in my hair. I probably had a gold in my mind in the 40s too.
spk_0
I'm not sure I wasn't here. Maybe the 60s. We were here.
spk_0
So it was all bullshit?
spk_0
No, none of it was bullshit. It happens when it happens and things change.
spk_0
Time is not what it once was and it isn't anywhere. If you've done one thing,
spk_0
you're living in the past and that's your glory day, that's your glory day.
spk_0
This is my glory day. I'm here talking to you eating octopus.
spk_0
I got my boots on his knees.
spk_0
And my bike.
spk_0
And if only it was big enough he'd be...
spk_0
I mean, now we're gonna have a cigarette.
spk_0
Got that? Thank you.
spk_0
spk_0
I try to make paintings that are so beautiful that I get lost in the world I'm doing.
spk_0
And we just hope that other people get lost in it the same way.
spk_0
You know I have a jolary over my bed.
spk_0
No, you posted it. That was nicely you posted that.
spk_0
And sometimes you know you get these letters and stuff like you're painting save my life to the...
spk_0
Yeah. But then sometimes because I don't have any shows...
spk_0
Oh, that's great. It feels pathetic, you know.
spk_0
Well, this is incredible to me.
spk_0
What?
spk_0
You don't have shows.
spk_0
That's insane and it's sick and it's wrong and I don't even want to complain about it.
spk_0
You complain about it?
spk_0
I'm complaining about it.
spk_0
I am bitter.
spk_0
Because I'm gonna die one day and they're gonna be worth a lot of money.
spk_0
Right.
spk_0
So my paintings are gonna be on the same TV station as Wolf Blitzer.
spk_0
Oh, they are.
spk_0
Yes.
spk_0
This is just really a breakthrough for me.
spk_0
He's a big art fan.
spk_0
He is not.
spk_0
How I came to New York was like I was kind of like on this culture and I wanted to find God through music.
spk_0
You guys started meeting all these amazing people.
spk_0
They were a reverent.
spk_0
The energy was enormous and it was probably more fun than anybody's ever had in human history for about a year or two.
spk_0
But there was no discipline.
spk_0
Which I mean I like people complain they're interested in like they just found it on the street.
spk_0
But they can't just do it once.
spk_0
They got to work on it.
spk_0
I mean I was a serious sexual player.
spk_0
I came here as a sexual player.
spk_0
I had to hide the fact that I had to hide.
spk_0
I mean I really did.
spk_0
I would practice for two hours every day but I wouldn't tell people.
spk_0
So these are eggs which you can get you know at the store.
spk_0
So if you live in a good neighborhood they will even deliver them to your house.
spk_0
And then you take water which I know you got all these exotic places but they used to say that New York had the best water.
spk_0
That is true.
spk_0
You think it's still true?
spk_0
I haven't heard anything to say otherwise.
spk_0
Do you drink it?
spk_0
Yeah I do.
spk_0
And then you boil them.
spk_0
And then I serve them to you.
spk_0
That's Danny.
spk_0
I am grateful and honored.
spk_0
Well I'm really curious because I've seen your show and I watch you sit down and you eat like some mouse head soup.
spk_0
And then you go hmm it's delicious.
spk_0
Just curious to see when you eat the hard boiled egg if you're going to say this is delicious.
spk_0
As long as it's not like half term chicken feet is in there.
spk_0
And it wouldn't be the first time today.
spk_0
By the way I'll be thrilled.
spk_0
We really felt like the universe was between Houston and 14th Street and Bowery and Avenue C you know.
spk_0
And if you went outside there you were a phony you were a traitor.
spk_0
It's like we're done with you.
spk_0
It's like it's going to be an account.
spk_0
What about film?
spk_0
I mean it's a turnout you ended up curing and work by your spot.
spk_0
You know, you go downstairs you run into a friend and you want to get a cup of coffee then that's you know what I mean?
spk_0
You know what I mean?
spk_0
I mean I'm not acting that one and now hold the boom on that one you know like think about it that much.
spk_0
You know what?
spk_0
And so look at that.
spk_0
I'm not eating this shit.
spk_0
Here's a plate.
spk_0
Eggs the perfect food.
spk_0
I mean you sir.
spk_0
Eat that.
spk_0
I don't think I've ever cooked for anybody before.
spk_0
Well I'm on it sir.
spk_0
So look it back.
spk_0
Is there a danger of over-romanticizing that place and that time given the downside and the body count?
spk_0
I don't know does it have to end badly?
spk_0
I mean have glad I survived it.
spk_0
I'm glad I still got my own liver.
spk_0
I'm glad I live through it.
spk_0
But it's kind of...
spk_0
I don't know how to add that up.
spk_0
I'm sure glad I didn't miss it.
spk_0
Doesn't pay to try.
spk_0
All the smart boys know why.
spk_0
Doesn't mean I didn't try.
spk_0
I just never know why.
spk_0
Feels so cold at all.
spk_0
Baby I'm not at home.
spk_0
And when I'm home.
spk_0
Baby I'm still alive.
spk_0
Feels so respite I am.
spk_0
In my head against the pole.
spk_0
Try to knock some sits down in my mouth.
spk_0
And roll it on the shore.
spk_0
The skies are on shore.
spk_0
And when they go.
spk_0
Baby I'm in the hole.
spk_0
You can't put your heart around the memory.
spk_0
You can't put your heart around the memory.
spk_0
Don't you like.
spk_0
Don't you like.
spk_0
spk_0
spk_0
Get up and then erase everything.
spk_0
You didn't say the egg was delicious.
spk_0
You did not, but I ate two of them.
spk_0
Silence is the highest compliment.
spk_0
Just the gnashing of my jaw.
spk_0
It's delicious, delicious eggs.