Get two writers who grew up in New York City in the 1970s talking and they don’t stop, or at least Peter Blauner and I don’t stop, in a conversation that ranges from seeing The Cramps at CBGB’s, a crusading young prosecutor named Rudolph Giuliani, and a borough president plunging a kitchen knife into his chest. As Blauner says, New York City “was a Wild West of a place and continues to be.”
Then it’s onto the current charges against Mayor Eric Adams, who was indicted last week on five federal charges, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, solicit foreign contributions, and bribery.
“There’s an argument to be made that, to have an impact in New York City, you have to be an out of control egomaniac in City Hall,” says Blauner. “But part of what's fascinating about some of the Adams scandals is that they're not that sophisticated, the ones that we know about. It's a pretty blunt instrument.”
Blunt and yet effective, with Adams’ aides and confidantes, commissioners and department heads resigning or being fired by the day, so many that a friend compared the (insofar as we know bloodless!) carnage to the penultimate scene in Goodfellas.
How far will this story go? According to Blauner, “We're barely through the prologue, Nancy. We are barely to chapter one.”
Also discussed:
The three essential reporter tips given to Blauner by Pete Hamill at their first lunch, “before the sandwiches even hit the table.”
The favorite Good Humor ice cream of 1970s NYC transvestite hookers
The gangs of Five Points
The greatness of both novelist Richard Price and actress Mariska Hargitay
“The population [of New York City] is so diverse that you're always going to have 47% of the population hating your guts and pissed off at you and dying to confront you in some way.”
I mean, what’s the Turkish population of Brooklyn anyway?
Nancy is to pandemic Chinatown as Charlton Heston is to Omega Man
Plus, why you should never stop when someone bangs their shoe against a wall, how research can be “a sophisticated form of procrastination,” why fiction writing requires you let the car go over the side of the cliff, and much more!
Links and transcript after the break.
Intro/outro: “Kid Dynamite” by Matt Welch
