ATIT Reheated: Remembering the 1980 NYC Transit Strike

By Jack Brummet, NYC/Metro Ed.

[reprinted from ATIT, December, 2005]

Contract talks broke off between New York transit and union negotiators last night without an agreement (just before the midnight strike deadline). 34,000 workers have gone on strike. Seven million people a day need to find another way to get around.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced a "comprehensive emergency plan" to help mitigate the effects of the strike with more ferry service, only car pools allowed into Manhattan, several major streets, including Fifth Avenue, clear of all traffic except buses and emergency vehicles. I believe taxis are also required to pool riders (as they did in 1980).

We lived in Manhattan during the 1980 strike. It started on April Fool's Day and lasted 12 days. According to nycsubway.org, the absentee rate during the strike was around 15-20%. That may be true, but those of us who actually showed up for work didn't make it in until very late, and everyone left early. It was basically a circus atmosphere all over town. Employers were glad to have us show up for even a few hours a day. Even the most skinflint of employers (and that would include mine, Carl Fischer music publishers) paid people to share cabs in to work. The cab ride from the Upper West Side to the East Village took about two hours...barely faster than walking. It was a total zoo, with gridlock everywhere, and thousands of cops on traffic duty to contain the honking, chaos, and (literally) millions of pedestrians.


Heading to work on The Brooklyn Bridge

I don't remember road rage, or riots, or people being particularly angry. In fact, it was like anytime things went wrong: New Yorkers pulled together; they griped and kavetched, and they lived with it, and had a pretty good time doing it. I remember the endless commutes, schlepping back and forth from uptown to downstown. I remember sharing cab rides with Arthur Cohn (the cranky, funny composer and conductor known for his books on contemporary music, The Collector's 20th-Century Music in the Western Hemisphere and 20th-Century Music in Europe), Susan Lurie, a friend and excellent flautist, and at least one other person, possibly Pinky Rawsthorne. . .although if she was in the cab I think I would have remembered it, because there would have been a lot more laughter.

The New York Post Transit Survival

Guide - Click to enlarge

In 1980, the subways were dirty, dangerous, smelled, tended to catch on fire at times, had no air conditioning, and were covered with tags and graffiti. And boy, did we miss them. After returning home at night, you stayed in your neighborhood, or within walking distance anyhow. Somehow they settled it all in a couple of weeks. Good luck New York!

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The NYC Swim-mobile, circa 1960

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The night Miles Davis was pummeled by an NYC cop (the week "Kind Of Blue" was released)

By Jack Brummet, American Music Ed.

From the original 1959 AP article "New York -- Miles Davis, 32, of 881 10th Avenue, a trumpeter now appearing in Birdland, 52nd Street and Broadway, was arrested after fighting with patrolman Gerald Kilduff, who had ordered him to move from crowded sidewalk. In the scuffle, Davis was hit on the head with a blackjack for which a St. Clare's ambulance had to be called. "

According to a recent article on the assault in New York magazine:  a cop asked Miles to move from the crowded sidewalk.  He said 'I work here' and, pointing to the club's marquee, 'That's my name up there.' A plainclothes cop, misreading the exchange, rushed over and beat Miles over the head. He was released on a $10,000 bail.   Doctors put five stitches due in the wounds.

One of the commentators on a recent piece about this wrote:  "Crazed Black Man Bangs Head On Nightstick as Policeman Stands Helplessly By"

This beatdown happened one week after the release of Kind Of Blue.

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ATIT Reheated: My visits with Richard Nixon in NYC

By Jack Brummet, Editor-in-Chief
with research by Pablo Fanque, National Affairs Editor

Frank Curran, Claudia Curran, Nick Gattuccio, and Jack outside Richard Nixon's House, 1980 - click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

One of my favorite things when I lived in NYC was to visit President Richard Nixon.

The President had a sweet townhouse at 142 East 65th Street on the Upper East Side. We probably stopped by five times while I lived there. I would drag friends there in a taxi, or car, if someone had one. The President never actually came out to greet us, although I often hoped he'd come out and say hi to the kids, and hang with us like the time he visited the students at the Lincoln Memorial. Maybe we'd have another one of those uncomfortable Nixon moments where he is bound and determined to seem like a regular guy. . .an almost laughable goal.


A few years after he resigned, he returned east from his California exile. This is the President who wanted to send me to Vietnam, so I had mixed feelings, indeed, about this man. He kept the Great Society funded, even as he lied and weaseled his way to disgrace. What could you think of the ex red-baiter who went to China and opened diplomatic relations? He was a two-edged sword, which made him endlessly fascinating. And I went there to pay homage to both Good King Richard and Evil Dick.

These visits often occurred around closing time. I seem to recall often having a bottle or go cup in hand, as we stood outside the townhouse for ten or fifteen minutes and pondered the dark and magnificent phenomenon of President Nixon.

In all of those visits, the Secret Service never came near us. We saw them a few times, but no matter how loud and raucous we got, they never approached. I guess that makes sense. There were 20 million people living within an easy car drive. We were probably not the only knuckleheads in the region to stop by.

In the mid-eighties, Richard Nixon and I both moved from Manhattan. He moved to Saddle River, New Jersey and wrote a lot of books, and advised every President in some capacity.  RMN died in 1994, in NYC.

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Music in NYC 1972-1977

I am reading a fascinating book about the NYC music scene from 1972-1977--Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever.  I arrived in NYC in '77.  The book details the emergence of hip hop and rap, the loft jazz scene, salsa, punk, the new serious music a/k/a/ classical of Steven Reich and Phillip Glass, and the new wave.  

It was pretty cool to be there and catch the tail end of it.  Anyhow, this reminded me of one night in 1977 when Kev Francis Aloysius Curran and I went to the opening of Hilly Crystal's new club in the East Village, CBGB 2nd Avenue, in an old Yiddish theater on 2nd Avenue between 3rd and 4th Streets.  On the bill that night: The Talking Heads, The Ramones, Television, and Blondie.  The Hell's Angels, who lived across 3rd street from my future brother in law Colin, were out front of the theatre selling acid and nickel bags. The theater was almost 2,000 seats...way bigger than CBGBs proper.   Looking at who was playing, it's just stunning that it wasn't a sell out.  OK, rambling now. 

One of the most interesting facts in the book I'm reading is that the Talking Heads lived three doors up from our loft at 181 Chrystie Street in the East Village.  Keelin and I sublet a place there for three or four months.  I never saw any signs of the Heads, but we saw a lot of other weird stuff.   I still often listen to the Heads, Ramones, Blondie, and other bands from back then, but tonight I went back and listened to a couple of my Television CDs.  I'd forgotten just how good these guys were. . .

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ATIT Reheated (from 2005): Remembering the 1980 NYC subway strike

By Jack Brummet, NYC Metro Editor

Contract talks broke off between New York transit and union negotiators last night [ed's note:  we published this in 2005]  without an agreement (just before the midnight strike deadline). 34,000 workers have gone on strike. Seven million people a day need to find another way to get around.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced a "comprehensive emergency plan" to help mitigate the effects of the strike with more ferry service, only car pools allowed into Manhattan, several major streets, including Fifth Avenue, clear of all traffic except buses and emergency vehicles. I believe taxis are also required to pool riders (as they did in 1980).










We lived in Manhattan during the 1980 strike. It started on April Fool's Day and lasted 12 days.

According to nycsubway.org, the absentee rate during the strike was around 15-20%. That may be true, but those of us who actually showed up for work didn't make it in until very late, and everyone left early. It was basically a circus atmosphere all over town. Employers were glad to have us show up for even a few hours a day. Even the most skinflint of employers (and that would include mine, Carl Fischer music publishers) paid people to share cabs in to work. The cab ride from the Upper West Side to the East Village took about two hours...barely faster than walking. It was a total zoo, with gridlock everywhere, and thousands of cops on traffic duty to contain the honking, chaos, and (literally) millions of pedestrians.


Heading to work on The Brooklyn Bridge

I don't remember road rage, or riots, or people being particularly angry. In fact, it was like anytime things went wrong: New Yorkers pulled together; they griped and kavetched, and they lived with it, and had a pretty good time doing it. I remember the endless commutes, schlepping back and forth from uptown to downstown. I remember sharing cab rides with Arthur Cohn (the cranky, funny composer and conductor known for his books on contemporary music, The Collector's 20th-Century Music in the Western Hemisphere and 20th-Century Music in Europe), Susan Lurie, a friend and excellent flautist, and at least one other person, possibly Pinky Rawsthorne. . .although if she was in the cab I think I would have remembered it, because there would have been a lot more laughter.

The New York Post Transit Survival

Guide - Click to enlarge

In 1980, the subways were dirty, dangerous, smelled, tended to catch on fire at times, had no air conditioning, and were covered with tags and graffiti. And boy, did we miss them. After returning home at night, you stayed in your neighborhood, or within walking distance anyhow. Somehow they settled it all in a couple of weeks. Good luck New York!

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John Lennon's involuntary departure

By Jack Brummet, Rock Ed. and NYC/Metro Ed.

"Imagine no John Lennon."  December 8th is such a sad day.  I just read a piece about Lennon on The Norton Report. 

We lived a few blocks away from the Dakota and often caught glimpses of John and Yoko around the UWS. I remember Keelin was in a store on Columbus once, and they cleared the store because the Lennons were coming in to shop.

That night, December 8th. 1980,  we could hear the sirens from our place on W. 84th. I was listening to Vin Scelsa on WNEW-FM 102.7, when he got word that his friend had been assassinated. It was utterly devastating listening to Vin's reaction. There was such a pall over New York those next few days; it was heartbreaking. New York had bounced back a little bit from the lows of the mid-to late 70's.  And then, this.  In our town.  One of our flawed, but great heroes, eliminated. . .

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ATIT Re-heated: Varnishing coffins and 86'ing the rubes - interview with a Manhattan bartender

By Jack Brummet, NYC Metro Editor

[We originally published this interview in February, 2006.  Around that time, I found a book I wrote in 1981 (The Spirit Below), in which this interview appears.  This is not an interview with a glitzy "Cocktail" style bartender. It focuses on the darker side of being the person on the other side of the bar...not that the bartender is necessarily dark, but the nature of the job brings you into contact with some unsavory folks and situations.]

JACK: You should try to answer these questions as a bartender, not as a drinker. Or at least, as a drinker second.

SCOOTER: Okay.

JACK: Do people come to your bar for a specific reason? Is it loneliness, habit, to forget, celebrate, looking for “love,” or do they just want a drink or two, maybe even because they are happy?

SCOOTER: A lot of people. . .this bar I work at is different. . .there’s a nice Italian man, inherited his father’s milk company. Some days he comes in to forget a problem. Obviously. Other days he comes in because he’s in a good mood. But I have heard stories. At work he’s a sonofabitch. But at the bar he is very friendly or at least polite. Sometimes he’s a little funny too. But this guy who works with him says he is always an s.o.b. Only in social situations is he a nice man. Never at work.

JACK: Only at the bar? He becomes human then?

SCOOTER: Yes. Another man comes in. . .the guy’s always upbeat. Says the world has been great to him. But. . .last night he came in, started telling a lot of jokes and was very funny when he got there. And he started drinking. He was drinking V.O. straight up, with a shot of Gran Marnier floated on top.

JACK: A stiff drink, in short.

SCOOTER: It sure was. Well, he has three in about twenty minutes. There are two women in the bar. He became very rude and started in with “I’ve got nine pounds between my legs…” You know. “Do you want to f***?”

Yeah, he was not rude. He was sick. He said it over and over again, like a very desperate man.

JACK: The real self emerged.

SCOOTER: Yeah.

JACK: Can you tell is a drinker will be like that when they walk in? Even before they hoist the first glass? Before they talk. . .

SCOOTER: I can’t. Other bartenders say they can. I guess I haven’t been at it long enough.

JACK: Another question—how much do you let people get away with before you 86 them?

SCOOTER: I’d have to say I’m pretty lenient.

Sidebar: The term "86" comes, quite possibly, from Chumley's bar and restaurant at 86 Bedford Street in the West Village in NYC. We used to go to this bar because it was one of Dylan Thomas's old haunts, like The White Horse.

JACK: Extremely?

SCOOTER: Yeah. But I’ve never really had a situation like that in New York.

JACK: But I’ve seen you, years ago, drop four glasses in a row and come back for another.

SCOOTER: I know. . .

JACK: . . .drop four because you forgot you were holding them and you were staring off into space. Would you let someone do that four times?

SCOOTER: No. But. . .well. . .a tavern is much different. This place [Dorian’s Red Hand. . .an establishment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, at about 80th Street I think. Jb] is a restaurant with a bar. People drink martinis, cognac and wine, not beer.

So. . .a Scottish guy came in here. I wasn’t working at the time. He was crazy. Bull goose loonie. The first time he came in he was a f***ing maniac. He was staggering around the place, leaning into the bar, stepping up into stools and swaying back and forth. Not really out of drunkenness but from that sort of drunken bravado, of feeling like a powerful human being when you are really just drunk. Those drunken sorts of motions, hyperbolic and exaggerated motions of the drunk. Did I just say hyperbolic AND exaggerated?

JACK: Well [laughs] I can’t remember. Let’s run back the tape. [Plays back tape] Yes. You did.

SCOOTER: Uh. . .I saw him get really crazy. Sort of like when we used to drink with Bob Huff [a professor of ours, a gifted poet, and a professional drunk]. He had that sort of approach: ‘I’m man’s man. . .we understand each other. . .I’m a Scotsman, and you’re an Irishman. And I love the Irish. . .even though. . .You’re a good man. . .descended from Kings. . .” and all that stuff.

Well, he came in once when I was working and he was really gassed. And he ordered drink after drink after drink. I kept pouring them, beer after beer. He was s***-faced when he walked in the place and he must have had eight beers in half an hour. He just poured them down his throat.

There was a funny thing about the guy, ‘though. He would only drink them down so far and leave the last bit in the glass. I tell you they weren’t getting warm. He would order another as soon as the glass reached some mysterious level. And finally he got rude and the manager came over and asked if I kept serving him and I said “Yes, I did.”

JACK: Isn’t it like technically illegal to do that?

SCOOTER: Yeah. But I think it’s more to protect the bar you would kick someone out for being drunk.

JACK: Save the mirrors and such.

SCOOTER: Yeah.

JACK: And no one ever really seems to get kicked out for being a happy drunk!

SCOOTER: True.

JACK: How about a trick you told me about once? Pouring vodka in a guy’s beer to speed the process, so to speak, and get him out the door?

SCOOTER: The guy’s crazy. Fifty-five, sixty. Tells me the same story time after time. And yeah, the vodka works. It gets them out of there. He has a couple of beers and he’s so crazy he can’t even taste the vodka. Another bartender here—Sean—said he would fill his glass nearly halfway up with vodka. Even if he were not drunk, a couple of those would send him down the road. One usually.

JACK: Do you ever feel like you are helping people varnish their coffins?

SCOOTER: No.

JACK: A guy comes in with D.T.s, or terminal alcohol bloat. Does it bother you to pour them drinks? A corpse on the other side of the bar. . .

SCOOTER: No.

JACK: You don’t care? If you see a guy almost literally dying?

SCOOTER: It’s his job to stay alive. Mine is to sell drinks. For instance, this one guy quit drinking because he had liver trouble, or epilepsy or something. A while ago, he started coming in and drinking light beer. The first couple of weeks he was drinking coffee or club soda. And then he quit drinking a few and would have twelve, fifteen beers. Sean said he drank 24 one time. Sean cracked a case as it happens on his first beer. And he emptied the case in an afternoon, five or six hours.

So the guy says to me once “Kevin, this beer is just not settling right. Give me a grapefruit and vodka.”

Now, he’s sliding fast. He’ll be back to Scotch soon. He acts like vodka, beer, anything but Scotch is all right. He came in here today and looked like hell. He’d been drinking two, two and a half days. I kept pouring them. And yesterday, he was in here on day two maybe and had twelve drinks in three hours.

So I saw what was happening and started pouring them with just a floater of vodka on top after his first two. Just a little vodka he could smell and taste at first. After that first blast, when you are that twisted, you forget about worrying whether or not you have sufficient alcohol in your drink.

He wanted to be somewhere. And I wasn’t really cheating the guy. He was lonely and a compulsive drinker. He’s almost dead.

JACK: So, in some sense, you’re actually extending his stay on the planet.

SCOOTER: Although he apparently doesn’t actually want to stay here. . .

[A long digression in the interview occurs here, where we discuss the relative merits of various potables, and go into cash register theft in bars, all of which is deleted because of possibly incriminating statements made about other individuals in the business, notably our friend The Dogfish. As it turns out, this interview will only first be published here, twenty-five years later, long after the statute of limitations has expired. However, All This Is That will be delving into this area in the near future.]

JACK: What is the best philosophy for a bartender to have?

SCOOTER: Pour.

JACK: Poor? Pour?.

SCOOTER: Yeah. That’s what Sean told me on Saint Patrick’s Day. ‘Yeah, keep pouring them and when they get drunk, rob them. Anything on the counter is yours Kevin. That’s business.’

JACK: Do you think the atmosphere of a bar is conducive to business? Does a bar provide the right setting for clear thinking? Because business guys we all know at least have to think clearly enough to fleece their marks. . .to separate the rubes from their money? I mean what is it about bars? The martial regularity? The neat order of the glasses and the bottles?

SCOOTER: No. It’s not the order or anything. It’s the liquor itself. There is a certain. . .as you know. . .lucidity that can be achieved drinking [1]. It’s great stuff. I’m not saying there isn’t a fragile point. There is a point where you have another and it’s gone.

Sidebar: Cf. Horace’s epistles I, v, 19: Brimming bowls—whom
have they not made eloquent?

JACK: One more question. Would you resort to violence to quell a brouhaha or disturbance? A guy comes in, say, extremely high, and gets wild. . .

SCOOTER: Even if he didn’t get wild, I’d kick his ass.

JACK: Right. Anyone who came off loco? What if he was a big, scary, dumb looking guy?

SCOOTER: If he was really drunk? If he was a big guy? I’d say leave! And if he didn’t. . .I’d whap him. Big or small. I’d grab a club and whip his ass.

JACK: But you can’t whip everyone. Do you guys keep heat behind the bar?

SCOOTER: No heat. But there is a baseball bat.

JACK: Wow. What about the bouncer? He almost didn’t let me in here today, you know, the clothes, the hair. He was a big sumbitch!

SCOOTER: Only today. . .on Saint Paddy’s Day is there a bouncer here.

Once in a bar in Washington [state]. I had to sort of kick this guy’s ass. You were already in New York by then.

A weirdo comes in. He was real nice, quiet, normal. But somewhere in there, he turns crazy. Jerry Melin was there when it happened. I was a crappy bartender. Always will be. Even back then . I didn’t like it.

JACK: You seem like a good one, just too reticent.

SCOOTER: So this guy comes in and wants to arm-wrestle me! There were two girls there. Now I can’t arm-wrestle. Any pain and I quit.

JACK: That’s funny because I’ve seen you in several retarded fights. . .get pummeled, and come back for more. . .

SCOOTER: Well, I suck at arm wrestling. This guy says ‘Let’s do it to see who’s stronger.’ I said ‘F*** that. Bet twenty bucks.’ He said ‘Let’s do it to see who the man is.” I came back and said I wasn’t going to do it for free. He said ‘You’re chicken,” and threw something at me. A drink. . .I don’t know. I got mad and walked around the bar and grabbed him by the seat of the pants. . .in front of the girls he—and I suppose I—were trying to impress. I walked him toward the front door, cussing him out, and punctuating each phrase with a knee in his ass. I threw him against a wall outside and tossed him his wallet, which had fallen out. He tried to come back in and get his umbrella and I said ‘You sonofabitch, get out! Get the umbrella tomorrow.’

JACK: What does that story mean? Would you fight for your job, to defend the honor of your bar’s sacred turf?

SCOOTER: No! Only an insult to me. F*** the bar.

May, 1981, New York City.

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Occupy Wall Street Photos from last week - Part 2

By Jack Brummet, Uprisings Editor

For Part 1 of these Occupy Wall Street Photos, go here. 

Click photos to enlarge.

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Occupy Wall Street Photos from last week - Part 1

By Jack Brummet, Uprisings Editor

I spent a couple of hours last week downtown at Zuccotti Park/Occupy Wall Street.  It was fascinating--particularly the hundreds of mainstream, sidestream, and downstream media there attempting to come up with a story, or some unique angle on a story. . .

Click images to enlarge.

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Strange Scene On The Highline

By Jack Brummet, NYC Metro Editor

We saw this trio when Keelin and I were walking along The Highline in NYC last Monday.  I was a little hesitant about snapping a picture. . .it was hard to tell if this was some sort of tender private moment, or a performance.  I went with performance.  The man on the right is holding a bald baby doll with baby blue sunglasses, dressed identically to both of the men.  On the front cover of the three ring binder from which he seemed to be reading to the doll is the legend "Digby 1990-1992."  We can just all fill in the rest of the story.

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Photos and notes from The Staten Island Ferry

By Jack Brummet, NYC/Metro Editor

It may sound corny, but The Statue of Liberty was always one of my totems when I lived in NYC, and maybe even more so now, since my other totem was demolished on 9/11/2001.  When I actually lived in New York, the Staten Island Ferry cost either a nickel, a dime, or a quarter; it's free now. 

Taking the Staten Island Ferry, you see the fantastic working harbor, sailboats, cabin cruisers, cruise ships, barges, Governor's Island, and, of course, Ellis Island, and Staten Island. As the ferry pulls away from South Ferry you get great vistas of downtown, and the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges. You see the new skyscrapers in Hoboken, and after a while, the massive and extremely long Verrazano Bridge, that links Staten Island to Brooklyn.

It was good to see the Lady of the Harbor up close once again. I saw a few older folks--probably one-time immigrants--with tears in their eyes as we pulled alongside The Statue of Liberty. 

On my last trip here. . .three or four years ago, I didn't get out into N.Y Harbor, so it was a priority on this visit.  I like the Statue as a work of art, but mainly as a symbol of not so much what we are, as what we can be.

-Click photos to enlarge-

The Staten Island terminal at South Ferry

Near the ferry dock, with a view of--I think--Hoboken (Jersey City? Seacacus? I don't know...) 

Downtown, as the ferry pulls away.  In the left 1/3 of the photo, you

can see 1 World Trade Center under construction. They recently

changed the name from the previous and misguided title,

Freedom Tower.

The Verrazano Bridge, linking Staten Island to Brooklyn

a closer shot of the Verrazano, the longest bridge in

North and South America; when it was built in 1964,

it was the longest bridge in the world

The gal, with tourists lining the base

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