Black Cracker Presents: Tales of...Season 1
Tales of Times Square: The Tapes
This podcast presents voices of strippers, old fighters, burly-q men, peep show girls, hustlers, cops and the priest who tried to save them.
By Josh Alan Friedman
Season 1: Tales of…Times Square: The Tapes
An audio record of Times Square in the 1970s and '80s, drawn from Josh Alan Friedman's original cassette interviews.
Between 1977 and 1986, Friedman reported from 42nd Street for Screw, The Soho Weekly News, High Times and New York magazine, and the tapes he made became the book Tales of Times Square (Delacorte Press, 1986), still considered the definitive account of the strip before Disney and the Times Square redevelopment cleared it. Nothing in this season is reenacted or narrated from memory. These are the voices themselves, restored from deteriorating cassettes.
Episodes include Pee Wee Marquette, the caustic emcee of the jazz club Birdland through the '40s and '50s; Izzy Grove, one of the last surviving Guys and Dolls characters; and Bob Anthony, Frank Sinatra's boyhood friend and first bodyguard, who ended up running the back office of the Melody Burlesk.
Start anywhere. Each episode stands alone.
LIVE NUDE GIRLS 25¢. Peep Shows were a phenomenon as common to Times Square as slot machines to Las Vegas. Live Nude Girls became the neon community catchphrase. We visit Roger K as he creates the technology in his private laboratory at Show World.
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THE TOAST OF BROADWAY. A lightweight contender in the 1920s, Manny Rosen worked in the kitchen of the Stage Delicatessen for 32 years—in charge of making toast. But he also wrote “King Heroin” for James Brown, after losing his daughter to heroin. He became the right-hand man of Bob Anthony, “Mr. Burlesk,” in the Melody…
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The Catholic Church Vs. Times Square.
Three priests of Holy Cross Church witnessed the rise and fall of Times Square. Father Robert Rappleyea, pastor during the era of porn, saw the human condition reach bottom. He put up a bold front.
COPPING A FEEL IN TIMES SQUARE. Show girls, moonlighting nurses, pickpockets and members of a fake marriage ring. Live Nude Girls 25¢ was the neon community catchphrase, and it was all about fast cash.
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Innocent victims of adversity. That’s how Uncle Lou, a geologist turned chauffeur, saw many of the girls in Times Square, who affectionately called him Uncle. His scrapbook documents an era of burlesque queens and porn starlets, whom he remains loyal to decades after their careers ended.
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