Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - Mini Ep #120: "Borscht Belt Memories" with Marisa Scheinfeld

Episode Date: July 13, 2017

This week: Appreciating Al Jaffee! Revisiting "The Swimmer"! Gilbert plays the Nevele! And Jackie Mason to the rescue! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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problem call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca please play responsibly here we go hi it's gilbert godfrey and i'm here with frankadre, and this is another edition of Gilbert and Frank's Amazing Colossal Obsessions. You bet. And our guest today is Marissa Sheinfeld, and her new book is The Borscht Belt, Revisiting the Remains of America's Jewish Vacation Land. Colossal Obsessions. America's Jewish vacation land. Colossal Obsessions. It's a wonderful book. Welcome, Marissa. Thank you for having me. Yes, we were just talking about how you found us.

Somebody wrote to you, somebody said... Somebody wrote to me on Twitter and said, Hey, you should reach out to the amazing Colossal podcast, which is now Obsession. Well, there's a... Oh, there's the short version. This is the shorter show, which is now Obsession. Well, there's a... Oh, there's the short version. This is the shorter show. This is our Obsessions.

And our Obsession today is the Catskills. Well, my Obsession for five or six years has been the Catskills. So we have something in common. Catskills, I always thought, came about because it was not uncommon in this country to see a sign on the front door that said, no Jews allowed. It's very true and very sad. Jews were banned in this country from not only hotels, but employment, social club membership. And I talk about it in the book in the 1920s. And that was a big reason for the creation of the Borscht Belt, this desire to have a vacation like Americans, all these immigrants

coming into the country at that time and not be persecuted and enjoy. And because the Borscht Belt was so close to where we're sitting in New York City, it developed very easily into a destination for Jews. So it kind of like, well, like on the West Coast, the Jews weren't allowed into like country clubs. Yeah, sure. And so Hillcrest came about as a place that Jews in show business could go and hang out. It's a place that Jews in show business could go and hang out. Yeah, I mean, it was and is an unfortunate reason, but I think what it did was it created this mecca for Jews and this place that has so much history, not only in the Jewish experience, but how the Borscht Belt crossed over into the American popular culture and into media and, of course, into Hollywood.

So its impact is huge. I mean, I meet people from all over the country that went there, worked there, met there, fell in love there, like crazy stories all the time. And it never kind of ceases to amaze me how many people are connected with it. And then people that know nothing about it, you have to just say a movie or a name of a comedian and then it's like, boom, get it. So out of this dark moment in American history, out of the anti-Semitism of the 20s, this wonderful thing happens. This is not only, as you say, it's not only just the resorts and the destination, but it becomes part of the American experience. It becomes the place to be for the time that it reigned supreme, which was really for about 50 years, 1920. Historians say it kind of tanked in the 60s and 70s. And I grew up there. So the book is really, you know, an investigation

about the land that I'm from. But it's also... Is it Kiamesha Lake? Is that where you're from? Kiamesha Lake is where we lived when we first moved up there from Brooklyn in 86. Okay. And my parents live in a little town called Rock Hill today, all really near Monticello, which is kind of like the big name where the Concord was and Kutcher's and Grossinger's is just up the way. So all those big name hotels. And you were left, Go ahead, Gil. Now, someone who we've had on this show, Al Jaffe. Yeah. He he said he compared all the years of the peak of the Catskills like the Shtetls. He did. You know, Al, I've gotten the wonderful opportunity to hang out with him twice. Isn't he the best? Amazing, wonderful man.

I photographed him twice, and he actually wrote a little blurb in the book because he used to go there, and he always had told me it felt like a shtetl in Lithuania, and he told me he lived with his brother and his uncle and a little rental, and they would go to all the hotels, and they were like delivery boys, I think, you know,

and he has great memories of it. But, you know, very early on when it was really building, Grossinger's was like a farmhouse at that point, I think. And can you tell our audience the definition of a tumbler? A tumbler is kind of like an emcee, like the person that just gets you going, right? Yeah. Like the DJ. Was it a little bit of a social director? Definitely, yeah.

You kind of work the grounds of the hotel, work the pool. Work the crowd, schmooze, get people on the dance floor, get people to play bingo, all like the kitschy activities that happened. You know, I don't remember that. You know, when I was a kid, I remember getting dropped off at Kutcher's or the Concord on the weekend. My grandpa was a huge card shark and that's how we got access. My grandparents met up there. My grandmother was hitchhiking. And later on in time, when I came around and we moved up there, I just had, it was, they were these fortresses of fun where I just remember I'd get dropped off and I would go swimming or I'd play shuffleboard and it was just fun. And I think that's what the word borscht belt encapsulates for so many people

that lived it. You were a lifeguard? I was a lifeguard when I was 16. It was one of my first jobs at the Concord right before it closed. Wow. Yeah, it was, you know, I was talking about it the other day. I don't really remember anyone ever in the pool. I think we were all just kind of like joking off. But, yeah. I remember, I think Jackie Mason said he was hired at the Catskills as a cook, but he couldn't cook, so they made him a lifeguard. Is that true? Really?

I love that. Wow. I never heard that. I think our friend Bill Persky was a lifeguard at Grossinger's. Do you know Bill Persky? I don't. We'll connect you to him. Awesome.

He was an original writer on the Dick Van Dyke Show. Okay. And he was, I hope I'm not misspeaking. I don't think he was a tumbler, but he had work in the summer at Grossinger's. So we'll connect you guys for sure. In the heyday, how many hotels? Over 500. Over 500 and over 50,000 bungalows.

Can you imagine? Was it 538 was the number I found in your book? 538, that's what the time says. 538 hotels. Not all year round, but most of them were year round. Incredible. See, this is what- And thousands of resorts. What gets me about, I mean, there's a bunch of theories in the book that some even say air conditioning. Oh, yeah. They love to say that. When air conditioning was common to most people, they didn't have to escape to the country. And then TV, they had entertainment at home. But I don't know.

To me, in theory, at least, the Catskills seems like, well, you know, you get a chance. It's not that far away. You drive up there. You're in a nice hotel. You're in the country. You get all the food you could ask for and entertainment and activities. And so I never quite understood why that alone couldn't be something to get people still going. I think at the time when the hotels were on their decline, there were so many other things going on in the world. You have the boom of the airline industry, where now you can get on a plane and fly to Paris or fly to, you know, the Caribbean. It was no longer just, I mean, airplanes used to be for rich people.

Yeah. And all of a sudden airplanes were for everyone. You know, the cruise industry where you can get on a ship and see five countries in five days. People like to say it was the growth of the suburbs where now you're not really like schlepping up to the country and you have a little lawn and you don't need to necessarily be in the hot city. There's so many reasons. If you think about the decline in 65, 70, what was going on? You know, you have a war, you have like a women's rights movement, civil rights movement. And there was also a huge thing that happened in 65. Historically, the Anti-Discrimination Act was signed, which no longer banned people, Jews, blacks, from going to other establishments. So now Jews that were once banned from going to

a hotel in, you know, Pennsylvania or wherever, are now able to go to any place that they ever wanted to go. So, you know, it's kind of sad because I feel like the demise of the Borscht Belt was because of the Jews. Well, there's that great line in the book where, I'm going to get her name wrong, is it Jenna Weissman, her last name? Jocelet. Jocelet. Well, she's saying that when she talks to Jews about the passing of the Borscht Belt, that they lament its passing.

They never miss an opportunity to lament its passing, but they own the responsibility. They have to take the responsibility for the fact that it went away. 100%. You know, I've talked about the book probably 50, 60 stops all over the country. And there's a lot of kvetching with the Jewish crowd. When they look at my photographs, I think it's so easy to say like, oh, it's so sad what happened. But then you have to look at the course of time in history and why people left. And the Catskills just wasn't cool anymore. You know, it fell out of vogue.

They didn't keep up. They had the same acts, the same architecture, the same food. It was like, you know, my dad, I remember he told me in 69 after he went to Woodstock, he didn't want to go up there every summer. It was boring, you know? I remember. Same people. I worked the catskills

once where did you work i then nephilee oh interesting and i and as far as like not keeping up with the times there was like i remember i was sitting in the the dining area for breakfast or whatever and and there was a family at one table and the little kid was eating whatever, like maybe a hamburger. And he had a glass of milk. And that'sbi ran over to the table, pulled the milk away from the little boy and started screaming at the family. And I thought, when you're trying to get people in, you know, get a little loose on some of these laws.

I think, you know, there was a variety of hotels, not only price point, but level of religious observance where you can go to totally kosher or like kosher style or places that weren't at all. I mean, there were hotels that had sort of like different themes. And I mean, there was a hotel for cross dressers in the Catskills. There was there was a lot of different pockets of kind of flavor going on in the Borscht Belt. different pockets of kind of flavor going on in the borscht belt. And, you know, I think that unfortunately, you know, its demise is, you know, the book in a lot of ways, it's kind of a sad poetic statement, but it's an elegy, you know, to its passing. But it's also in the same sentence, a celebration of how great it was. There's sometimes looking at the after photos.

The before and afters? Yeah. It kind of reminds me of watching Titanic. Yes. I had the same thought. Beautiful ships. And then they show the actual footage where it's like rotted. Well, you see the beautiful chandelier and then you see these things on the bottom of the ocean. And it's similar. It is. The book has a sense of apocalypse. There's a lot of themes going on. But that feeling that the world just ended and people just departed is definitely flowing through it.

And what you're talking about is called re-photography. through it. And what you're talking about is called re-photography. It's the process of taking an old postcard or an old image and going back to the same place and remaking that same image, just like the photographer did. So they're essentially a now and then. And that's how I started the project. It was very like, this is it in 1965 and this is it in 2012. But quickly, I started to see a different story that was outside of that box and that's how the whole series developed so it has a little bit of both in the book when you see that pool it's the pool at the laurels hotel yeah and there's nothing left standing and but the pool in the pool itself the structure's gone that yeah it's like the you know the concrete's opening and grass is growing through the pool.

It's hard to look at, and yet it's beautiful in a way. And what struck me in one part of the book, a little while ago, I got asked to go on Turner Classic Movies with Bob Osborne. movies with Bob Osborne. And one of the movies I picked to show was Burt Lancaster in The Swimmer and about a guy who's, you know, swimming from pool to pool. He's swimming his way home. And in the book, it says that John Cheever, who wrote the original story, got his idea from looking at what had happened to the Catskills. That's really interesting. You know, because there was over, what, 538 hotels, you have a ton of pools. I could have probably done a book just on pools because they're the hardest thing to unearth.

They physically have to go in there and dig them up as opposed to a building where you can just level. Or over time, it just kind of comes apart and crumbles. And, you know, whether it's Mother Nature or people ripping it apart for value. So there's a lot of activity going on. Because I never read the book, but in the movie, it's he goes from pool to pool, swimming an imaginary river of swimming pools. And each time it's a different layer coming off where, you know, the American dream is not what it's supposed to be. And they said he got the idea looking particularly at the pools.

That's fascinating. At the Catskills. You're going to have to look that up. Once beautiful pools, and now they're... We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing, colossal podcast after this. FanDuel Casino's exclusive live dealer studio has your chance at the number one feeling, winning. Which beats even the 27th best feeling, saying I do. Who wants his last parachute?

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The other one that's disturbing is the skating rink at the Pines. Oh my, yes. And you just, yeah, what's for our listeners will be clearer that there are before and after pictures in Marissa's book. And she found, you found original photographs and then you shot the version of it today. So the Pines, it was an ice skating rink. And then I went back and photographed it. Now, actually, that building is totally gone. So it puts the book in a new, weird place because that structure that was once a skeletal version of the ice skating rink is demolished. Yeah. So there's a sense of time passing. And like, I always felt up against

the clock with this book because whenever I went back and I went to each hotel dozens and dozens of times something always was changed whether something grew whether there was a tree coming through or something cracked or the ceiling caved in there was always this this layer like you kind of said that was peeling back where you'd see the root which was the borscht belt and the hotel itself, but what had happened and what was going on in the present and then what you think might even be happening in the future. You know, there were birds living in there and lots of different, you know, I found remnants of people living there and there were people going in there besides me. You know, these are

almost like free-for-all zones for like squatters and people that scrap metal. Were you fearful going in to take the pictures? Did you take security with you of some kind? I learned really quickly that I couldn't do this project by myself for a variety of reasons. Yeah. So I always brought a friend. So I wouldn't have to worry about, you know, you're in Grossinger's and there's eight buildings and you're in one of them and no one's there. But is there someone there? The stairways to nowhere, the abandoned lobbies, I mean, the empty card rooms, you just, it's like Chernobyl. It is post-apocalyptic. I was thinking as similar to you. I was thinking of like, like Dresden.

That's what it looks like. The fire bombings. Yeah. I looked at a big book by Robert Polidari. He did a whole series on Chernobyl. When I was doing the work, there was a lot of influence by, you know, previous photographers that had gone into Detroit and places where there is this feeling of just abandonment. So the book really is like it's haunting and it's kind of eerie, but very much so. It also has a lot of life going on. And I want people to see that, the growth and the change. And even though it's very bittersweet, there's a lot of transition happening in the book and also in the Catskills today.

And tell the audience the major stars that passed through the Catskills. Yeah. I think some of the biggest are like mel brooks um i remember as a kid seeing billboards for jerry seinfeld and that was like way before his show um joan rivers jackie mason um rodney dangerfield on rodney dangerfield's in his archive i've seen uh notes they're called like mountain jokes and this was when he was like Jack Roy. Oh, yes. This was like before.

And supposedly he got like either laughed off. Something happened where an act in the Catskills caused him to quit comedy for a period of time where he was like a door-to-door salesman. He was an aluminum siding salesman. Aluminum siding salesman, yes. We covered it on the show. He was a tin man. I mean, there's so many names like Hendoor salesman. He was an aluminum siding salesman. Aluminum siding salesman, yes. Yeah, we covered it on the show. He was a tin man. Yeah. So, I mean, there's so many names, like Henny Youngman.

I mean, Sid Caesar. But, yeah, I mean, you can go on and on and on and on. I mean, like, it's endless. I remember growing up when I was a kid, it seemed like every other billboard in the country had a picture of Jerry Lewis with the words, Browns is my favorite resort. Yeah, we didn't even mention Jerry Lewis. I have a paperweight. Also in the book, besides the photographs and like the now and then, there's a lot of kitsch and ephemera because the borscht belt produced that whether it's menus or like little photo

viewers where you go get your picture taken and they're like little key chains ashtrays ashtrays soap yeah um there's a lot of really cool things and and those are laid out within the essays of the book so um it puts you there what it really does me is and i i never really knew what these were called but boy when i saw them in the book, that brought back my childhood. Those things, yeah, you'd look into this plastic thing and it would magnify a picture at the end. Someone once told me the name for it, but I think it was a name that her family called them. I just call them like photo viewers, but it's not a good enough name. I'm not sure there is another name for that.

And there would always be a key chain attached. A key chain, yeah. Yeah. It's funny you mention the comics because, too, one of the things that in your book that says that brought about the demise is that comedy changed. That this kind of burlesque style of stand-up comedy was going away. Oh, yeah. So that was it, too. I mean, that was another thing that kind of dated the place.

Definitely. And a lot of the comedians that kind of practiced their first jokes there now graduated to television and to movies. So they left, you know? Right, right, right. So everything kind of changed. I mean, like, in the book I write, you know, when I sat down to really think about what am I doing, what am I photographing? And what is it about?

There's this one sentence that I made my editor keep in because it really felt true. And I write, I grew up in the mountains, or as others called it, the country, as if no other mountain or country existed any place else on earth. And I really do feel like for like a specific time and a specific group of people, it is so true because like it was the place to go. And, you know, people light up when they talk about it, if they've been through it. I can imagine how many people started families because they met there over the summer. They fell in love or, you know, or they started a family there. Yeah, I mean, my grandparents met there. My grandmother was hitchhiking. My husband's parents went there on their honeymoon.

I mean, it just doesn't stop the stories, you know? I also remember a story that there was a Martin and Lewis movie that was going to be opening. And Jerry Lewis wanted it to premiere at Brown's. And, of course, Dean Martin got totally pissed off, and he said, if they have the premiere there, he's not showing up. Interesting. And the only one you ever visited was the Nevillee? You didn't even go to the

other ones as a vacationer? No, no. Never went to any of them to be at their resorts. What was your performing experience like at the Nevely? The band liked me. Okay. Where did the Nevely get its name?

It's interesting. It's 11 backwards and I think the story goes that it was... Wasn't it nuns? 11 nuns or something? 11 visitors? I think it must be 11 founders or partners. There's a lot of tall tales about it. 11 nuns or something? 11 visitors? I think it must be 11 founders or partners. 11 founders, okay. There's a lot of tall tales about it,

but that iconic building is still there, that circular white building, and the showroom that you performed in is in the book, which is pretty cool. Yeah, Marissa opened the book and showed Gilbert what's left of the Nevely showroom, and it's spooky. Because it's like the owners thought I was funny at the Neville and the band. And I remember after I played the Neville and it was, you know, if you just went by the audience reaction, horrible.

Somebody told me they were riding on a subway train and they heard some old Jewish woman talking about being at the Neville and saying that some guy up on stage, he's screaming and squinting. And he leaned into this old Jewish woman. He goes, I'm sorry. I couldn't help but overhear. He goes, this comedian you were watching at the Neville, was his name Gilbert Gottfried? And the old Jewish woman looks up and she goes, yeah, terrible. Perfect. What were the big rooms?

Was Grossinger, Grossinger's on the Concord and Kutcher's or maybe the, and Brown's. Yeah, those are the big ones. Yeah, those are what they call like the fortress hotels, which is the model of that all inclusive today where you go to a hotel and you don't have to leave. Like you fly to Jamaica and you stay in a hotel. Everything's there. And you don't go. And that also contributed to the demise because now you didn't have to leave. You know, Grossinger's had its own post office, its own airport. I mean, it had everything, indoor, outdoor, skating rink. It was, it was a mini city. Yeah. Grossinger's, the Browns, but then there was the Pines, the Laurels, which is in the

book. Then there's smaller ones that maybe, you know, like Perlin's, Little Bungalow Colonies, Esther Manor. There's the bowling alley. The bowling alley is at the Homoac Lodge. The Homoac, the Tamarack. Had you heard of all these places? Yeah, the book has about 40 sites in it. I never attended them with my family.

Why is that? Your family didn't vacation. Yeah, or we were like those kind of, like those Jews but not Jews. I always felt like, with me, I'm a Jew in that I know if the Nazis were to come back, I'd be on the train with everybody else. Like, I don't know the holidays. I don't know everything. So your parents were not, they were not Catskills people?

No, not Catskills people. Yeah, you know, not everyone was. I mean, it's a big part of like where I grew up. So I think that, you know, that just kind of like falls where it is. And that's why I did the book, because I was interested in where I grew up why it looked like the way it did and why all these structures were just lying there like untouched why it wasn't anyone doing anything about it and it's a lot of different political social reasons for the reasons why 40 or 50 different properties are just sitting there but a lot of the sites in the book are totally gone, meaning that there's not even, you know, a decrepit lobby there. They're paving it and there's a condo there now. Some of them are repurposed, Jewish community centers, things

of that nature. Yeah, a lot of them repurposed. Yeah, there's meditation centers and ashrams and yoga centers. A lot of them, some of them are rehabilitation centers, drug rehab. Some of them are kind of like assisted living. Right. I think Ed Koch had a plan in the late 70s or the early 80s to make homeless housing among some of the hotels that was voted down by the locals. But you're saying some of them just, everything's gone. In the book, there are certain sites like the Palms, which is called like Zygers and El Dorado. It had multiple names. I drove by that. Totally gone.

No markers. Nothing. There is no museum marker where you drive on Route 42 and it says here once were 40 hotels up and down in the name. So, you know, I think that I feel like photography itself is an act of preservation and you make a photograph and it's there and it's that moment in time. So in some way, the book is the preservation of the hotels and of the Borscht Belt, even if people, frankly, are disgusted with the way that it looks, you know. And was at one point they also wanted to make it like a big health resort? They are. Kutcher's is make it like a big health resort.

They are. Kutcher's is going to be a big health resort. The Brickman has long been a yoga center. The site of the Concord and a bungalow colony next door called Breezy Corners was knocked down. And that's where they're building the new casino that is set to open next year. So there's a lot of turnover and change happening, little towns that are kind of springing back up. You know, the book makes it seem like nothing is going on up there, but there's a lot. And it's really close to New York, and I think that's why it will see a second life.

It'll never be what it was because you can't recreate that. But I think that it will see a turnover, and it already is. It's interesting. It's born out of anti-Semitism. It's where Jews go to be with their own. And then as Jews begin to assimilate, as life gets better for them, this paradise is no longer needed. It goes away.

It's no longer wanted. It's a sad path. It's very tragic, you know, and like the cover of the book is really like, it's a lawn chair in an indoor pool with grass growing through the carpet, through the floors. And it's really like a paradise lost to me. Very much so. Now here's a very weird question. When you were there, did you have any moments where you just kind of, this is what I would do, is kind of close your eyes and just try to imagine? All the time.

Hear the children, hear the splashing. All the time. Get a sense of what happened, what was there. Hearing the band playing. The band or an audience being warmed up by a tumbler. I tried to proceed with a lot of intellect. Like, this is my mission. I'm going to this hotel that day, and I'm going to photograph this, and I'm going to go back, and this is not where I should go.

But when I walk, for example, I remember stepping foot out into the clearing where Grossinger's outdoor pool is. And it's an Olympic-sized pool, and the cabana is still there. And I remember being there with my friend, we were like, damn, like imagine what this was like. And I felt like we both tried to feel the energy. Yeah. Because I am a person that I pick up on a lot of energy and there would be these weird happenstance moments where I'd, you know, get there and like a huge breeze would blow by. And I would just feel like, you know, there was a there's a presence there, like something happened there and it was great and it was fun. So these places aren't haunted.

They're not it's not like going to an asylum or or a hospital where there might be weird energy. Like there was this this quiet but really interesting energy happening. And, you know, you walk into a room where there's a huge stage and it's empty, you know, um how interesting it's it's cool and all of the performers all Jewish performers it's funny that years later there would be comedians named David Steinberg and Robert Klein but not then yeah Billy Crystal yes yeah but not then. Yeah. And Billy Crystal. Yes. But not then. But not then. Yeah, because of the anti-Semitism, because of the shunning. It was red buttons. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. And Buddy Hackett. Yeah, red and shaky. Right. And Jack Carter. Oh, yes. He had all these anglicized names. Yeah, like Jack Carter, I can't even pronounce his real name.

You reached out to Mel Brooks' people. Have you talked to Freddie Roman? Freddie Roman? Yeah. Freddie's in that wonderful movie, Sweet Lorraine. He wrote something for the book. His quote is really great. It's something like these photographs

are terrible. At the same time, while they evoke memory, like my heart aches. It's very mixed bag, his quote. It shows the bittersweetness of it. He lived it. Yeah, Mel Brooks gave me a great quote for it. The book has quotes from, you know, a photographer, Laurie Simmons.

It has Mark Klett, who did a big re-photography now and then that I got inspired by his work. It has authors who have written. We talked about Al Jaffe. He wrote something in it. Historians, Sullivan County historian, John Conway. It's got a mix of academia, entertainment, and then art. It's a photo book, but it's also a history book. Yeah.

It's really engrossing. Thank you. And it's getting back to what we were talking about before about how, you know, they did it themselves, you know, tearing down the Catskills. Right. Well, it became uncool. Up until then, the whole idea like of a group of Jews, it would be like outside forces pushing them out. And here they were in charge of it all and just got tired of it. Yeah. And Jenna Weissman Josselet, who writes such a great, like witty, but also very elegant essay in the book, she writes something along the lines of like

Jews left the Catskills on their own volition. Like no external forces forced them and pushed them to leave. You know, it was those forces that pushed them there. But then, you know, there's they just left on their own accord. Like it's like they grew up there, but they never went back home. Yeah. It's beautiful. It's sad at the same time. I just took a train ride up to see my father-in-law for Father's Day,

and I couldn't put the book down. I was reading it on the train. I just kept looking, and certain pictures just draw you into them. Yeah, certain ones pull. Really pull you into it. I mean, if you care about, as we do on this show, history, and specifically show business history, you have to get this book. And I kept thinking of Titanic.

Me too. I kept thinking of Chernobyl and some of those abandoned cities. It's Dresden, as you said. Yeah. But you could look at it as, as you said, an elegy or a celebration of what it was. Yeah, and I think for those that went, it definitely pulls on the heartstrings. But it's not a nostalgic book. This is like a raw, real contemporary look at the Borscht Belt in a way that maybe people that lived it don't want to see it. But for me,

it was all about looking at it from a different angle and looking at the eyesores that are now there, almost like these creatures of failure, and transforming them with my camera and looking at them in a different light. Well, our listeners will spark to this book. They'll love it. It's right up the alley of this show. And what else are you doing? You said you had some other photo books in the works? Oh, I'm tinkering away with thoughts of a new project. Yeah, I'm really interested in the land. I'm interested in history. That's been a long string running through my work. There's always been a Jewish component to projects I've done before this, but this is my first like actual book. Um, I'm really looking at kind of

like folklore and urban legends and, but I don't know where it's going. It's like, there's always a process of creation and I think stuck is one of them. Um, but I was very stuck before I started this project and, and some advice was how I started it. And the person said to me, shoot what you know. When you don't know what to do, shoot what you know. It's like applicable to writers or comedians or musicians, anyone. Like go to the source of who you are, where you're from. Well, the book's also personal because you lived it.

It's in your genes. It's in your blood. And so where can they get it? Sure. Whatever books are sold, Amazon. Yeah, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, but indie bookstores have it. Local bookstores, borschtbeltbook.com is the website. You can order it there.

And I've been speaking about it. I'm really grateful to be speaking about it since it came out last October. And I have dates set through the end of the year. So there's a whole site there. We're going to hook you up with two people, Bill Persky and my neighbor, who after I knew her for three years and we exchanged pleasantries in the hall and I knew nothing about her at all, one day let's slip casually that her father was the CPA,

the accountant, the staff accountant at Grossinger's, and that she dated Buddy Hackett. That's awesome. I've known this woman for three years, passed her in the hallway, had long, lengthy conversations with her, and one day I find out

that she dated Buddy Hackett and her husband dated Anne Bancroft. Oh my God. Which is a story for another show. But the book is wonderful, Marissa, congratulations.

Thank you. Marissa Sheinfeld. That's an angle-sized name. It's as chewy as you can get. She wanted to get Marissa Buttons. Well, there were like Jerry Lewis was Joseph Levitch. Aaron Schwatt, Red Buttons.

Oh, that's right. Yes. And I think Mel Brooks was Melvin Kaminsky. Melvin Kaminsky. Yeah. And I think Danny Kaye was Danny Kaminsky. That's correct. Yeah. And Jacob Kabels Kaye was Danny Kaminsky. That's correct. Yeah.

And Jacob Kabelsky. Oh, that's right. Jack Benny. The book is called The Borscht Belt, Revisiting the Remains of America's Jewish Vacation Land. Thanks, Marissa. Thanks for finding us. Thank you for accepting me. The book's wonderful.

And this has been Gilbert and Frank's Amazing Colossal Obsessions. Sorry you bombed at the Neville. Colossal Obsessions