From The Archives: The NYC Slides, Part 1

By Jack Brummet
Chief Archivist

A couple of months ago, I began scanning a box of slides we have from the years 1973 to around 1983.  I posted them on Facebook because many of the surviving subjects/participants are on there.  I always intended to also put them on All This Is That.  And, now, I am finally getting around to it.  This first batch is from the years we lived in Manhattan and Brooklyn (1977-1982).

Click all photos to enlarge. Right click to download.

Parade in Brooklyn, shot from our fire escape at 324 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn

Franco, Claudia Curran, Nick, and me at President Nixon's brownstone, 1980

Jack and Franco, late at night on the UWS

Me, Nick, and Franco on our stoop on West 84th Street

Me with a wonderful painting Pinky and Cheryl Loaned us for the entire time we lived on 84th St

Jerry Melin and Jan, Upper West Side, 1981

Me, with my gal and my pal.  In heaven, or what?

Keelin, across the street from our apartment in Brooklyn

Keelin, Jan, and Jack in Brooklyn

Franco posing near faux armor, NYC

Franco and Nick outside a theatre in NY?

Nick, Franco, Jack, and Topiary

Miya (heart)

'Moto. but not quote sure where...it probablyis not Manhattan

'Moto, Nick, Kevin, and Jack on our stoop @ 158 W. 84th St. NYC

Nick, 'Moto, and Franco aka Kevin

Sean, on our fire escape at the Atlantic Avenue Parade

Pinky, turning Japanese.

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Jack interviews Senator Jerry Melin, ca 1980

From 1973-1984, I recorded hundreds of hours of material in San Francisco, Seattle, and New York City. The Archives--a collection of cassette tapes, drawings, poetry, and ephemera--containing these recordings has largely disappeared, being lost, borrowed, and rendered unusable by the ravages of time. This recording was salvaged from a crumbling generic cassette tape by a Seattle audio engineer, Ian Rodia. The sound levels vary widely, there is a large amount of ambient noise, including buses and semis passing by. To make matters worse, every few seconds there is a bump sound in the recording caused by a defect in the recorder's mechanism. Jerry Melin died a decade ago, and this is one of the few audio recordings that survived him.


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Jack Brummet interviews Senator Jerry Melin, 1980, New York City

Of the literally hundreds of hours of recordings in The Archives, only one cassette tape has survived. That cassette, fortunately, contained numerous recordings of the late, greatly and dearly loved Jerry Melin. This is one of them. Thanks to Ian Rodia, who digitized the crumbling generic cassette tape. As you can hear, the cassette recorder itself generated a "bump" every few seconds, and the tape is filled with the ambient sounds of buses, semis, glasses tinkling, coughs, and mumbling. Nonetheless, it is good to hear Jerry's voice.

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