Meeting the touring President is an ancient ritual for local politicians. As a Republican office-holder running in the same year as the President dad was not going to miss the photo-op. In my self-assigned role as prodigal son I'd made sure that the family knew how I felt about Reagan, so it's a good example of my father's sense of humor that he sent me this pic. I responded predictably.

The Desis danced on Times Square sidewalks when the assassination headline appeared on the news ticker. Hell, we wrote a song called “Try Again Hinckley.” A likable actor—I think he's great in Kings Row—he was a hateful President. He embodied the worst excesses of the Southern California GOP, and the middle class in this country will never recover what he stole from us with his tax cuts. When The Ramones put out “Bonzo Goes to Bitburg" in 1985 I made sure I had a copy of the 12".

Tin Pan Alley's owner was a communist who profit-shared with her employees. Nan Goldin worked there and she's documented the scene extensively in her photos. The bands all made $300 and ate anything they wanted from a pretty good menu plus anything they wanted from the bar. We played two sets; noise rock specialists Rat At Rat R were announced as playing the following week. We were never treated so well.

8BC was a dramatically different experience.

I watched Saturday Night Live when it first appeared in 1975. The National Lampoon had its footprints all over the thing at the start: Michael O'Donoghue was the original head writer and he was sick and offensive and completely unpredictable. Andy Kaufmann started showing up; the short films of Albert Brooks were brilliant; Howard Shore was the music director years before his great scores for Ed Wood and Lord of the Rings. The comedy was scathing and above all subversive. The writers had opinions and expressed them. And then there was the music—actual live music. Patti Smith, live; Elvis Costello, live; I never expected to see that. I hadn’t seen music live since Ed Sullivan. Nothing was live except sports; in pursuit of perfection and convenience the TV industry lost the ace in its deck.

I stayed with the show long enough to have opinions about Bill Murray in the second season. Gradually the writing became too tame to offend, and the musical acts were never what I wanted to hear—not until that exquisite Nirvana broadcast in '92, anyway. I’m not sure when I stopped watching, but I drifted away. The rest of the broadcast week was that "vast wasteland" Newton Minnow talked about so long ago. I had no favorite shows until 1990 when David Lynch floored us with Twin Peaks. There are years-long periods where I can’t identify any of the actors or theme songs or titles, years of programs that I did not see.

Then came the decadent phase of my TV experience. Walking into the apartment after a night at the bar or the club or the benches of Tompkins Square, I wanted something funny and I wanted it as much as I wanted another beer. Cable was available at this point but I couldn’t afford it; VHS was hitting it’s prime but I couldn’t afford that either. This was when one local New York station had a flash of inspiration I can still barely believe: starting at 2 AM every weeknight, three episodes of Mary Tyler Moore were run back to back, followed by two episodes of The Bob Newhart Show. You were set till 4:30 in the morning. After that you just had to hang on till Davey and Goliath.

The Keiv was one of the busiest spots on the peirogi circuit, the Ukranian or Polish places where keilbasa, stuffed cabbage, and blintzes were available 24/7. At the Kiev you could eat for two dollars (the kasha varnishkes were $1.25) and still leave a small tip.

Katz's, a not-kosher Jewish deli on Houston Street, has been open for over a century. There was a cab stand right across Houston Street where I could park for free. The place is still around but always crowded and a lot more expensive.

The older Checker cabs were disppearing and the replacement was the Chevy Caprice. Any one of the cabs in this picture could have been driven by me, at least on the night shift.

Friend Richard in the West Village by the gas pumps of the Dover Garage. We spent a good part of the eighties there. Richard had a tight band called Open City that played A7 in the early 80s when I was still running the sound. We renewed our acquaintance at Dover as we stood around in the shape-up every night. Later he opened a great CD shop on Ninth Street.