Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning_1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City

by Jonathan Mahler

  8.

  My portrait of Clay Felker and New York magazine under his stewardship is drawn from interviews with a number of his New York colleagues, including Tom Wolfe, Richard Reeves, Ken Auletta, Byron Dobell, and Milton Glaser. Aaron Latham very generously shared with me his unpublished oral history of Felker. Tom Wolfe’s two-part essay, “The Birth of the New Journalism,” which was published in New York when it was still an insert in the Herald-Tribune, recounts the history of the journalistic revolution Felker helped pioneer.

  For my account of Murdoch’s hostile takeover of New York, I relied on coverage in New York’s dailies; a lengthy front-page story in the January 9, 1977, Washington Post (“Takeover in Gotham: How a Press Baron Bought a Magazine”); interviews with Felker and several of his investors, including Alan Patricof, Robert Towbin, and Thomas Kempner; the aforementioned Murdoch biographies; and Gail Sheehy’s July 14, 1977, Rolling Stone feature (“The Struggle for New York”). For Carter Burden’s perspective on the matter, I relied on his close friend and business partner Bartle Bull.

  9.

  A number of the Yankee’s beat reporters—named in the acknowledgments—shared with me their memories of Reggie’s first spring training with the team. Harry Stein’s July 1977 profile in Esquire—“Meet Reggie (Dr. Jekyll) Jackson (Mr. Hyde)”—provides a portrait of Reggie in the 1976–77 off-season.

  Martin Appel, coauthor of Thurman Munson’s autobiography (Thurman Munson, Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1978), spoke with me about Munson. Several profiles also bear mentioning: “What Makes Thurman Run?” (Dan Lauck, Sport, June 1978); “Bitter Munson Still Hoping to Be Traded” (Murray Chass, New York Times, July 5, 1978); and most notably “The House That Thurman Munson Built” (Michael Paterniti, Esquire, September 1999).

  11.

  Ed Koch sat for several interviews. Moreover, he generously granted me access to a sealed 617-page oral history he conducted in 1976 with Columbia University. That oral history captured Koch at the ideal moment for my purposes. It was my most important resource in understanding his attitudes and frame of mind at this moment in his life and political career.

  Koch’s various memoirs—especially Mayor (Simon & Schuster, 1984) and Citizen Koch (St. Martin’s Press, 1992)—were all valuable, as were two other books about him: I Koch (Arthur Browne, Dan Collins, and Michael Goodwin, Dodd, Mead & Company, 1985) and City for Sale: Ed Koch and the Betrayal of New York ( Jack Newfield and Wayne Barrett, Harper & Row, 1988). of New York (Jack Newfield,

  Ken Auletta’s two-part profile of Koch published in The New Yorker in September 1979 was especially illuminating, as were John Corry’s October 30, 1977, New York Times Magazine cover piece (“The Koch Story”) and Michael Harrington’s Dissent essay from the fall of 1987, “When Koch Was Still a Liberal.”

  On Carmine De Sapio, a February 15, 1962, profile by Meg Greenfield in The Reporter , “The Decline and Fall of Tammany Hall,” was noteworthy, as was an unsigned October 31, 1959, story in The Nation (“The Two Faces of De Sapio”).

  For the 1963 race between Koch and De Sapio I relied primarily on the coverage of The Village Voice.

  John LoCicero, who started working for Koch during his 1966 race for the New York City Council, helped fill out my picture of Koch as a young politician.

  12.

  In addition to the daily newspaper coverage, two books, both published in 1978, served as indispensable blueprints for the 1977 season: Ed Linn’s Inside the Yankees: The Championship Year (Ballantine) and Steve Jacobson’s The Best Team Money Could Buy (Atheneum).

  13.

  Mario Cuomo spoke with me several times about his background and the 1977 mayoral race. Robert S. McElvaine’s biography, Mario Cuomo (Scribner’s, 1987) was a valuable resource on Cuomo’s early years. Sidney Blumenthal provides an insightful portrait of Cuomo in Pledging Allegiance: The Last Campaign of the Cold War (Harper-Collins, 1990).

  Several profiles of Cuomo also bear mentioning: “A Curious Politician” (Murray Kempton, New York Review of Books, September 19, 1974). “Cuomo Rising” (Nat Hentoff, Village Voice, April 18, 1977); “Is Saint Mario the Ethnic Savior?” (Richard Gambino and Michael Novak, New York, September 5, 1977); Ken Auletta’s two-part series in The New Yorker (“Governor–1” and “Governor—2,” April 9 and 16, 1984); “The Question of Mario Cuomo” (R. W. Apple Jr., New York Times Magazine, September 14, 1986); and “A Hard Case” (Murray Kempton, New York Review of Books, July 19, 1984).

  Jimmy Breslin writes about the Corona controversy in his Preface to Cuomo’s Forest Hills Diary. Another noteworthy account is “Corona: Cause for a Day” (Ross Gelbspan, Village Voice, July 8, 1971).

  Valuable sources on the Forest Hills controversy include Cuomo’s Forest Hills Diary (Random House, 1974); Cannato’s The Ungovernable City; New York 1960 (Robert A. M. Stern, Thomas Mellins, and David Fishman, Monacelli Press, 1995); “The Battle of Forest Hills—Who’s Ahead?” (Walter Goodman, New York Times Magazine, February 20, 1972); and “Not You, Not You” (Andy Logan, New Yorker, November 11, 1972).

  14.

  Roger Director, a former editor at Sport, shared his memories of the magazine with me.

  Robert Ward recalled for me the details of his spring training interviews with Reggie.

  Sy Presten told me about his role in publicizing the Sport story.

  15.

  Fran Healy recalled Munson’s reaction to the Sport story for me.

  Ray Negron told me about his journey from juvenile delinquent to failed ballplayer to Reggie’s aide-de-camp.

  16.

  My account of the Seaver-Young feud was informed by interviews with Tom Seaver, Jack Lang (who covered the team for the Daily News), and Maury Allen and by the blanket coverage in New York’s dailies. Especially memorable stories on the Seaver trade include “There Goes the Franchise” (Pete Axthelm, Newsweek, June 27, 1977); “The Year the Mets Lost ‘The Franchise’” (Paul Good, Sport, November 1977); “Seaver Beaned by Columnist” (Joseph Valerio, More, July-August 1977); and “The Unmaking of Seaver as a Met” (Kenneth Turan, Washington Post, June 26, 1977).

  For my portrait of Young, I relied on the torrent of odes in the New York and sporting press following his death in 1987, as well as Ross Wetzsteon’s fine profile in the August 1985 issue of Sport: “Dick Young’s America.”

  17.

  David Wojnarowicz’s journals are included in his papers: MSS 92, Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University.

  Timothy J. Gilfoyle’s essay “From Soubrette Row to Show World,” published in the collection Policing Public Sex: Queer Politics and the Future of AIDS Activism (South End Press, 1996), sketches the history of public sex in Times Square.

  Mayor Beame’s campaign against pornography was covered by all the New York papers, most comprehensively by the Times.

  Randy Shilts writes about the arrival of AIDS on New York’s shores during the 1976 bicentennial celebrations in And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic (St. Martin’s Press, 1987).

  For my portrait of gay life in New York in the mid to late seventies, I relied on interviews with a number of participants in the scene; back issues of Michael’s Thing (available in the Manuscript Room of the New York Public Library); back issues of Christopher Street magazine (also available at the New York Public Library); and Arthur Bell’s columns in The Village Voice.

  The definitive history of New York’s bathhouses, Allan Berube’s “The History of Gay Bathhouses,” was published in the collection Policing Public Sex.

  The book Becoming Visible (Molly McGarry, Fred Wasserman, and Mimi Bowling, Penguin, 1998), which began as a catalog for an exhibit commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of Stonewall, is a valuable resource on post-Stonewall gay life in New York.

  The best description of the sex piers can be found in Edmund White’s 1978 novel Nocturnes for the King of Naples (St. Martin’s Press) .

  18.

  For my account of Abzug’s 1977 mayo
ral campaign, I relied on interviews with Holzer and Eldridge, local newspaper coverage, and several boxes of press releases, policy statements, and leaflets at Columbia University.

  Craig Whitaker, a young architect at New York’s Housing and Development Administration at the time, shared with me his files and memos on Wateredge (which later became Westway). New York 1960 contains a detailed account of the history of Westway. The New York Times’ Sam Roberts reviewed the history of the project in a two-part series in June 1984. One of the most forceful arguments against Westway is contained in an interview with Jane Jacobs in the February 6, 1978, issue of New York (“How Westway Will Destroy New York”). One of the most persuasive arguments in favor of the project is Ada Louise Huxtable’s column in the January 23, 1977, New York Times (“Will Westway Turn into the Opportunity of a Century?”).

  19.

  I relied on Catfish Hunter’s autobiography, Catfish: My Life in Baseball (McGraw-Hill, 1988), for the broad outlines of his career. Several magazine profiles are also particularly noteworthy: “The Quiet Ways of Catfish Hunter” (Pat Jordan, Sport, November 1971); “Opening of the Catfish Season” (Roy Blount, Jr., Sports Illustrated, March 1975); and “The Catfish Enigma” (J. Anthony Lucas, New York Times Magazine , September 7, 1975).

  20.

  My portrayal of the dugout debacle at Fenway is drawn from New York and Boston newspaper accounts, as well as the radio and television broadcasts of the game. Fran Healy told me about his role in the afternoon’s events.

  Moss Klein shared with me his memories of tracking Martin down at Daisy Buchanan’s. The Reverend Jesse Jackson told me about his conversations with Reggie over the course of the summer. Steve Jacobson and Phil Pepe described for me Reggie’s outbursts in his hotel room.

  21.

  Reggie spoke with me about the difference between his views on race and those of the previous generation of black ballplayers. A number of beat writers shared their perspectives on the racial dimension of the Reggie-Billy feud. Elliott Maddox spoke with me about Martin.

  The Associated Press reported in May 1987 that Reggie had been admitted to the hospital that he claimed had denied him access because he was black. Pat Cheevers, whose father was Reggie’s Little League coach, provided me with the score sheets that show that Reggie had actually played in the state tournament that he denied having played in.

  23.

  Ralph Destino recalled for me the details of his friendship with Reggie.

  Jim McMullen told me about his now-closed restaurant and about Reggie’s food and table preferences.

  Reggie remembered his New York nightlife for me.

  24.

  My account of New York’s disco culture is drawn from interviews with more than a dozen disco devotees and deejays. Tim Lawrence’s Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Culture, 1970-1979 (Duke University Press, 2003) was a valuable resource. Journalist Vince Aletti’s stories in The Village Voice (and elsewhere) provide an excellent record of the rise of disco in New York. A few other articles bear mentioning: “Hollyw-o-o-d! The Return of the Disco” (Mark Jacobson, New York, July 1, 1974); “Inside the Disco Boom” (Richard Szathmary and Lucian K. Truscott IV, Village Voice, July 21, 1975); “The New Wave of Discotheques” (Sheila Weller, Daily News Sunday Magazine, August 31, 1975); and “The Dialectics of Disco: Gay Music Goes Straight” (Andrew Kopkind, Village Voice, February 12, 1979). Carmen d’Alessio shared with me her memories of Studio 54. Anthony Haden-Guest’s The Last Party: Studio 54, Disco and the Culture of the Night (William Morrow and Go., 1997) lays out the history of Studio, from inception to implosion.

  For my account of the New York rock scene, I relied on interviews with participants, back issues of Punk magazine and the New York Rocker, and two books: Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk (Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain, Grove Press, 1996) and From Montmartre to the Mudd Club (Bernard Gendron, University of Chicago Press, 2002). Several articles from the mainstream press were also useful: “A Conservative Impulse in the New Rock Underground” ( James Wolcott, Village Voice, August 18, 1975); “Report from New York’s Rock Underground” (John Rockwell, New York Times, February 20, 1977); “(In Search of) the Next Big Thing” (Roy Trakin, SoHo Weekly News, May 26, 1977); “Punk Inc.” (Dave Marsh, Rolling Stone, December 29, 1977).

  25.

  David Garth shared with me his recollections of the Koch campaign. A few of the more memorable profiles of Garth include “David Garth’s Dangerous Game” (Jack Newfield, New York, 1970); “The Wizard of Odds: David Garth, John Anderson’s Media Mentor” (Myra MacPherson, Washington Post, September 19, 1980); and “Hot on the Political Trail” (Elaine Ciulla Kamarck, Newsday Magazine, August 20, 1989).

  26.

  A number of SoHo gallery owners and artists, including Paula Cooper, Ivan Karp, and Alex Katz, spoke with me about the cultural transformation of the neighborhood. New York 1960 includes a detailed history of SoHo. The Village Voice chronicled the early evolution of SoHo’s artistic community and its ongoing war with city planners in the 1960s and early seventies in such articles as “SoHo in New York: A Fight for Survival” (Ron Rosenbaum, November 6, 1969). Gilbert Millstein profiled the first wave of loft dwellers in the January 7, 1962, edition of The New York Times Magazine (“Portrait of the Loft Generation”). Ada Louise Huxtable wrote several important columns in defense of the neighborhood’s cast-iron buildings in The New York Times, including “Good Buildings Have Friends” (May 24, 1970). Among other memorable accounts of SoHo’s resurgence are New York’s May 20, 1974, cover package “The Most Exciting Place to Live in the City” and Stephen Koch’s April 1976 article in Esquire, “Where the Avant-Gardest Work the Hardest.” Michael Winkleman puts the story of SoHo loft conversions in the larger context of New York City housing in “The New Frontier: Housing for the Artist-Industrialist” (New York Affairs, vol. 4, no. 4, 1978). Richard Kostelanetz’s SoHo: The Rise and Fall of an Artists’ Colony (Routledge, 2003) provides a nostalgic reminiscence of the neighborhood during its bohemian heyday.

  Sharon Zukin makes the case against the conversion of commercial space into residential space in Loft Living: Culture and Capital in Urban Change ( Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982). Carter Ratcliff makes the argument that the transformation of SoHo was not necessarily good for art in “SoHo: Disneyland of the Aesthete?” (New York Affairs, vol. 4., no. 4, 1978).

  On loft jazz, I relied on a term paper by Ben Looker, an American studies graduate student at Yale, as well as the transcripts of several of the interviews he conducted with the musicians themselves. Peter Occhiogrosso, who wrote about avant-garde jazz for the SoHo Weekly News, Stanley Crouch, and Sam Rivers (the owner of the first jazz loft) all shared their memories of the scene with me. Other useful sources on loft jazz include “Loft Jazz Goes on a Three-Day Toot” (Robert Palmer, New York Times, June 4, 1976); “Jazz Lofts: A Walk Through the Wild Sounds” (Stanley Crouch, New York Times Magazine, April 17, 1977); and John Litweiler’s Ornette Coleman: The Harmolodic Life (Quartet Books, 1992).

  PART TWO

  27.

  For my account of New York’s loss of power, I relied on the reports from the three subsequent investigations (city, state, and federal), the depositions and testimonies given by the various principals, as well as the telephone transcripts of the conversations among the system operators (which can be found in New York City’s municipal archive). William Jurith’s son Edward provided me with some of the details of his father’s career with Con Edison. Carolyn Kay Brancato and Jonathan Rosner, senior staff members of the city’s investigation, both shared their recollections with me, as did Dr. Thornton S. Lauber, an engineer who served as a consultant on the city’s inquiry. The most comprehensive article on the mechanics of the blackout is “Investigators Agree N.Y. Blackout of 1977 Could Have Been Avoided” (Philip Boffey, Science, September 15, 1978).

  29.

  My portrait of Bushwick during the 1977 blackout is drawn primarily from interviews
with more than twenty cops and former cops who worked in the Eighty-third Precinct at the time. Michael Daly and Denis Hamill also focused on Bushwick in “There Goes the Neighborhood” (Village Voice, July 25, 1977).

  32.

  For details on the looting citywide, I relied primarily on special reports filed by the commanding officer for each of the city’s police precincts, Blackout Looting! (Robert Curvin and Bruce Porter, Gardner Press, 1979), and local newspaper coverage.

  35.

  My account of the modern history of Bushwick is drawn largely from interviews with residents and former residents. Blackout Looting! includes a section on the neighborhood’s soaring crime and poverty rates. In August 1977, a team of Daily News reporters led by Martin Gottlieb wrote an excellent five-part series on Bushwick, “Our Dying Neighborhoods.” Thomas Plate details the neighborhood’s arson epidemic in “The Blaze in Bushwick: Will the Burning Ever Stop?” (New York, July 18, 1977). Jason Epstein lays out some of the demographic and economic forces that devastated the neighborhood in an essay in the April 9, 1992, issue of The New York Review of Books, “The Tragical History of New York.”