KILLED - Episode 8: The Vibe

Episode Date: September 1, 2022

Vice ditches an oral history about the famously lit McCarren Park pool parties in Brooklyn. Featuring Eleanor Cummins and Patrick Sauer.To submit your KILLED story, visit www.KILLEDStories.com.

The venue was just unbeatable. If you're trying to picture it, Macaron Pool had been closed in the 80s and basically sat there. But it turned into what spaces like that turn into skaters and druggies and graffiti. So it had this beautiful abandoned aesthetic and then they turned into a concert venue.

The bookings were amazing. They had everybody from that era of Brooklyn Music, which was, you know, kind of astonishing when you start listing the bands that came out of there. They had TV on the radio, the whole steady and the driving rainstorm. They had the thermals, they had Matt and Kim. Kim, are you ready? Ronnie Spector played there, Regina Spector played there, all the Spectres. I would say the one show I did not see, which I cannot believe I didn't go to,

is the only time the Beastie Boys ever played in Brooklyn. The last show was in 2010. Welcome to the end of my channel, I know I miss. Five, six years later I'm swimming with my daughter and it just sort of dawned on me while in the water I thought, is that a thing that actually really happened? Did I see concerts here? Just seemed like there's a story here that needs to be told. From Justine Harmon and Audio Chuck, this is Killed, the podcast that brings dead stories back to life.

Episode 8 The Vive Okay, so the Macarons Pull Parties. Back in 2006, a trio of producer friends had the idea of reimagining a massive abandoned pool on the border of Greenpoint and Williamsburg in Brooklyn into a free concert series for the coolest names in music. They would call themselves jelly NYC. Why? Because it sounds cool. That's why. It was that last moment before the onslaught of social media. Back when you could still go to a concert and not have received screens all lit up in front of you. go to a concert and not have received screens all lit up in front of you. There was no social media, no story to post or caption to crowdsource. Maybe if you were lucky, one of your friends would wear a digital camera around a wrist all

night and then upload a Facebook album. You can't overstate iPhones Renew, you know, as one of the women I interviewed who had reviewed some of the concerts said, you know, back then I couldn't go through my phone and scroll through pictures to remember things I had to go through my brain. There's some nostalgia for that too, which you can never recapture that in any way. That's freelance journalist Patrick Sauer. If you couldn't tell, Patrick was there. In that abandoned pool in Brooklyn, under the arched red walkway, taking in the vibes, drinking craft IPAs.

And pretending like dodgeball in the rain isn't dangerous. He had spent the last near decade living that freelance writer hustle, pitching ideas to editors who did or didn't advocate for him, hearing and not hearing back. He wrote and he wrote, he pitched and he pitched. Stories about weed for the trays, sports for dead spin, and personal essays like things you should know when you turn 40 for GQ. Flash forward. A now older Patrick is swimming with his daughter in the pool that now sits on the holy site where he saw TV on the radio, in the thermals, and more than one specter. He was like Peter Pan being called back to Neverland.

And the euphoric recall? Well, it shocked him like an electric eel, sorry. Patrick knew he had to write it. All of it. So we started putting together an oral history, a lightly edited, as I remember, things conversation between the people who were there. I know some people have issues with the oral history format. I think it is perfect for certain things like this, where you mostly just want the good stories. And I was kind of like, well, I don't know where this is going to go, but my eyes will just keep talking to people and keep digging. For years, the piece got shuffled around. It moved around a couple times, bouncing from vulture to pitchfork to rolling stone.

Pitchfork, who felt it was too local. Before finally landing at Vice, the digital media startup that more or less peaked around the time of the pull parties. At some point I just said, I don't care what the word rate is. I would just like this to find a home. And then it was set up at Vice. Talk about a match made in absolute hipster sleaze heaven. And that was probably a year of kind of going back and forth and I'd occasionally hear from them and yeah it was it was around for a while. The beauty of that though

was that I just kept reporting because I knew it would find an audience. We're here at the pool parties, we're carrying part pool, and Brooklyn got some great music today, and Gayfee was gonna be. Somebody said to me in the piece, I can't remember exactly what the quote was, but it's something like this wasn't drunk in fights, or people weren't really, really at a hand. I mean, it was more the perfect buzz party.

You know, everybody was kind of drunk, kind of high, but it's hot, you know, if you've ever, anybody's ever been to New York City in the summer when you're standing on asphalt. And there was slip-and-slides and the fire department spray water and it did feel like you were getting away with something. It was at a time when the city was, not collapsing in the way that it did during the pandemic,

but the financial crisis hits. Could be the most serious recession in decades. And that means life as most Americans know it is about to change, in some cases dramatically. The joke was, we're calling it South Beach because it's part of Williamsburg had been underdeveloped until the like mid-2000s and they built these high rises. Nobody was living in. So sort of in the shadow of the pool with these empty

high rises like they had had at South Beach during the housing crisis. All of those high rises are now filled. That is very much now a different Williamsburg. But this was kind of the midpoint between the old real late 90s early out to Williamsburg when all of those bands kind of moved there versus what Williamsburg

is now, which is very killed. So it was like right in the middle, the bands were big enough that they mattered, but it was not overrun entirely with big money and fancy restaurants and all the things that go along with that. What emerged was a mood piece about this weird sliver of time when a certain variety of geriatric millennial sub-freak found their inner 80s latchkey kid in an abandoned pool in Brooklyn. I think it's a great place for wild folks like ourselves to hang out and just have a great time and reminds me of a little depth of New York that's fantastic. They went out of their way to curate not not just the shows where there was usually four, five

bands, I think, or three or four in a DJ. You know, Questlove DJ there, Mark Ronson DJ there. And then also they just had all this wacky shit. There was an ongoing dodgeball game at all times. The slip and slide, which looked dangerous as hell. And then they would have art exhibits like there was a massive Gibson guitar for people to sign. They had those wavy things you see at car washes.

And those tall guys were around. But not everything was so lighthearted. For all of its majesty, the pool also held secrets, dark secrets. The pool had all these sort of nooks and crannies, you know, old, I don't know if they were closets or just storage facilities. And there was a body that was found a few hours before the concert. One of the music producers, I believe, walked in there and the cops just kind of signed a flashlight. There's nothing in here and he's like, that smell has been there for a while now. And then he kind of like looked around a concrete barrier or something and then somebody had died of a drug overdose. A decomposing body is discovered near McCarran full in Brooklyn.

And the cops came and it was on New York one. I had to determine the cause of death of a man believed to be in his 50s. It's not clear when he got. But they had a show cut chemist was playing in like two and a half hours and they had to get ready or four hours or whatever it was and the show on. And I think Matt and Kim had played the week before and I told them that. And Matt said, I thought that's, I remember that smell and I was like, what, that can't just be a squirrel

or something. And he's like, I, he had sensed that something was decidedly a foot. You know, I always wondered. I felt bad that we didn't know anything about the poor guy who died. But also, it kind of fits into that era of Brooklyn. Like, you could still have a body sort of hidden away. You know, it was because of the venue, it just, it was some place that people break into and find a spot to do whatever.

And it's kind of how the concert's happened. This is Kilt, the podcast that brings dead stories back to life. Patrick's piece on the secret history of the Macaron pool parties had finally landed at Vice. Well, sort of. It had no expected run date, no official peg really, it was ever green.

So Patrick kept interviewing more people, he kept getting deeper into the scene. I tell Patrick that I was there too. Well, once I went and saw MGMT there. And that's the infamous one. That's that's their most famous show. That's right. I saw MGMT at the Macaron Pool back in the summer of 2008. Picture this. I was two years out of college and I only knew about it because my much cooler cousin Molly was a partner at Jelly NYC. And my friends and I bugged her until she promised to let us in. Which she did, even though we were wasted and wearing trash bags, because the weather had predicted rain, I think. Like Patrick, I had a hard time reconciling that day

with my current reality. Even though it really wasn't that long ago. But then I asked my roommate from back then who now has four kids, which she remembers about the day and let's just say thank God for journalism. Okay, so we went to the MGMT concert back in 2008 at the Macaron Pool. And from what I remember, the line to get in was ridiculously

long. We are here for the management concert, which we cut. This is the line after many thousands and thousands of people have been told to go away. The whole is more beyond capacity. And then the lines for a beer were also ridiculously long. And then one of our friends almost got into a fight because the crowd was so rowdy.

You guys really like the management? Yeah, I do. Also really like so canned a lot of it. That's mainly what I remember was the Routing Crowd and us wearing trash bags because it was supposed to pour but I don't think it actually did rain. Unclear. It was a foggy day but I think a great time was had by all.

Happy McCarran Park School Party Sunday. That's the one where apparently there was kids just trucking in from all over drugs and trying to bribe their way in and famously that is where I don't know if it's a man or a woman but somebody pooped in a purse and left it and at the end of the night somebody brought it to one of the producers of jelly and said oh somebody left their purse and she's we'll open up, see if there's an idea in there. And there was an idea of a form in that bag.

Patrick had it all. He had all the details, all the grimy stuff that helps a blink in its gone cultural moment. And a single epic MGMT concert live forever. But every time Patrick checked in with Vice, they seemed in no rush to publish. to be a company, a company that's not a company that's not a company. And so, I think that's the only way to get a company that's not a company that's not a company that's not a company that's not a company that's not a company that's not a company. And so, I think that's the only way to get a company that's not a company that's not a company. And so, I think that's the only way to get a company that's not a company that's not a company.

And so, I think that's the only way to get a company that's not a company that's not a company. And so, I think that's the only way to get a company that's not a company that's not one thing. At one point in my career, I did a lot of stuff for no money, even when I was older than I should have been, with the idea that this would lead somewhere. And a lot of it didn't. So I stopped doing anything for free except this. But here he was again, doing things he said he'd never do, and cursing an industry that can be so opaque to its freelancers. There was a point where I was like, am I going to self-publish this because no one's going to read it, then all this work is going to be probably for not.

The one thing when people ask me, you know, when people ask about writing, I always say, like, freelancing is really hard, and it's harder now because it's really hard to find platforms, no matter how pressurey and so timely. I think people don't realize if you don't have a platform, how hard it is to break through with anything. You put it up on the right place where people gather, you might have some success, but trying to get people, you know, it's the same as basically wearing a sandwich board outside, and you might as well hand it out as a PDF while people walking down the street. A couple of times people did some edits

and then it would just languish. And I will say I'm not the best at banging on people's doors. I think probably for a professional state of mind, you know, I've always feel like, and I don't wanna be the guy that's always harassing. Like, I don't know if it helps. Finally, after working on the story for more than a year with Vice, after a vertical was selected and an illustration was commissioned in September 2019,

Patrick's editor got a new job within the company. I got some bad news. The piece wasn't so much executed. Kill, kill, kill. Pieces kill. As it was gently put to sleep. Holy shit. My guess as the reason didn't get published

is because it was really long, and there was no... there wasn't any particular news hook to it in terms of why we need it now. It wasn't even that when I sent it out, it wasn't even the 10th anniversary yet. And it was a little bit sort of, I mean, I think it's universal because those bands, enough of them made names for themselves that I think people would look back fondly. But it is sort of hyper-specific to a part of Brooklyn and a certain time. I don't know if I knew why editors did what they did.

I'd probably be a lot more successful than I am. This is Kilt, the podcast that brings dead stories back to life. Patrick's oral history had been dragged around and then killed. He'd spent years on this thing. I believe it was Vulture I, Pitchfork. And no one seemed to get it. The concerts were in the past. That had to be Old Brooklyn. Old Patrick.

Didn't it? So, on October 1st, 2020, as we were heading into that first pandemic winter, I tweeted, wait, who's that? A freelance journalist slash superhero named Eleanor Cummins? Okay, third act. Usually my tweets, I think of them as being for like my six closest friends who like, like and laugh at my tweet. And I tweeted like, what if I started a newsletter that published one piece a week from freelancers

who know their story is great and just can't make it work right now? And I said, you know, we'll call it, we'll have to pass. We'll have to pass is the phrase no freelancer wants to hear. It is the Vegas softest form of rejection and kind of leaves you spinning. It's a response that I think a lot of people get from editors where they've sent a pitch that they're really excited about. And for whatever reason, the editor's gonna keep it to themselves what happened,

they get their response as we'll have to pass. And you don't know anything else, right? You're just left with that idea that some sort of inanimate force, as force the editor to pass on your story. There was some tribunal that came together and was like, how could she even have sent this idea our way? The royal we will have to pass on it.

And they can't even detail for you why, because it would just be too embarrassing for everyone involved. And so I wanted to kind of take that phrase back, because I know we're also sick of hearing it. And this week I got more traction than like any tweet I've ever sent. It got 115 retweets and 1500 likes.

People just really liked this idea. So with my friend, a fellow freelance journalist, Mary-Unru-No, we started working on it and soliciting pitches from writers. And our premise was that we'd never say we'll have to pass to them. At the height of the pandemic, a time of so much uncertainty for freelancers. Eleanor was a lighthouse.

I think there is something about journalism where the work just does feel so personal, because it's an idea that you had and developed and nurtured, and so when it's rejected, it feels like it's a rejection of you as a person. And so one of the things that we aim to do with this ab sack was pay people. It was, of course, a nominal fee. We were able to pay $100 in issue. But just to say, like, your work matters, you should be compensated for it.

You know, we weren't a cash cow by any means, and eventually discontinued publishing because we weren't able to be solvent. But for that time, I think it was about affording people the sort of respect that the will have to pass sort of auto reply email often feels like it's taking away. So I had tweeted out in October 2020 saying like, let's get this going. I definitely followed on Twitter. I don't know if we knew each other. You know, within a few days I had an email up and I was saying go ahead and pitch me. I saw the idea on Twitter. I thought it was a good one. And then... And Patrick was one of the first people to reach out.

I do remember sending her an email like I understand the idea. What about just a long piece that's done? And I said, and probably doesn't need a ton of work. Unless you have a word length, I could not go and pass this word count. He had completed a vast, I think like 8,000 word oral history of the Macaron Park Pools. And anyone in Brooklyn knows that there's this huge legacy there.

The thing about oral histories, and once again, I will stand up for oral histories, they don't typically need a ton of editing. And so he had assembled the story and had talked to like every single person involved. It was so, so thorough. And he explained to us in his, you know, initial email that he had put this together for vice. And then for reasons that I don't even think we're necessarily that clear to him, his editor ended up leaving, and then the publication didn't want the story anymore. Killed reached Patrick's editor advice, who confirmed that the story died on the vine once he got a new job back in 2019. So at that point, I wish Patrick pitched us in 2020.

I think he'd been sitting on it for more than a year, trying to sort of entice people. But one of the weird things about this industry is that a Killed story becomes touched us in 2020. I think he'd been sitting on it for more than a year, trying to sort of entice people. But one of the weird things about this industry is that a killed story becomes sort of taboo among new editors, right? And so like he wasn't able to convince anyone else that this was something that would be such a slam dunk for them, like literally copy and paste into your CMS

and you have a great piece. But he just had this, you know, sort of beautiful story that turned into an albatross until he reached out to us. So what he brought to us was like this magnum opus that needed nothing on our part to run. And it was just really exciting because it was like, okay, great, we have our first issue sorted. And we can start with a bang, right? This like fantastic story that for all intents and purposes should have been run in an amazing publication like Vice

and just through random happenstance ended up on our doorstep. And we were like, yeah, let's run with it. A little juzzing at the top and the piece was ready for its debut. Those sort of only changes that we made were kind of to the intro and outro, because he had a personal experience of having attended these pool parties, and then now as a parent takes his kids swimming at the restored pools. And I just remember that being such a beautiful and relatable kind of story arc, right? It encompasses the entirety of the MacKearan Park pool experience.

And so I think my real note was just like, can we emphasize this a little and sort of tease this out a little bit more? Because I think there's something so beautiful about his personal relationship to it. And I think that that's what sustained him and continuing to look for a home for it because it was something that he cared about so deeply.

On November 9, 2020, Eleanor ran Patrick's oral history as the very first piece ever published to Will Have to Pass. They went with the no bullshit headline, the McCarran Park Pool Parties, and oral history, and some gritty, pre-portrait mode party picks by photographer Edwina He. The piece is nearly 15,000 words long and travels from the excitement of that very first night. To the time Beyonce and Jay-Z showed up at the Grizzly Bear Show.

Grizzly Bear performing, they were just destroying things. This is an unannounced show. This is happening. And you are seeing right now, it's in the great place. Some 30 people are quoted. And he got artists like Dr. Dog, Holy Fuck, and Matt from Matt and Kim, to put it all out there and to put it all on the record. It impacts the purse poop incident, local feuds,

and the racial tensions embedded in the development of the pool itself. As Patrick had hoped, his wandering opus found its people. I don't know what the total number of hits was, but I know it was more than 10,000 I think. The story did bonkers traffic. I pulled it up the other day, so we had at the time, I don't know, yet we had 230 recipients for our newsletter. This story got 20,000 views. It was picked up by a bunch of local music sites and new sites as well.

Like Gothamist wrote a piece just being like, go check out this piece. Brooklyn Vegan picked it up. I did very well. You know, there's a few of those. I think people were definitely clicking because they were like, I would love to be anywhere other than in November 2020. Just an incredible number for a site that had just launched. It didn't have any critical mass. You know, it wasn't a previous iteration of something or it didn't have like

this person as a huge following to begin with. So this was really just people sharing, and I assume probably mostly people who had been there and just wanted to, hey, remember this, that was awesome. And it had a lot of great, you know, don't read the comments, this was the opposite. Like it was just everyone wanting to tell you how much fun they had there, have some funny little story.

And then a few people reached out with some, there was some good stories I would love to have. One of the, uh, soundboard guys said, there was people fucking like right there at the soundboard in one show and I was like we could use that we didn't have any sex in this story have very little sex. It was a vibe but kind of a daytime grunge vibe not like a sexy time vibe you know. The piece is nostalgic in a healthy way, right? Where it's just like, remember the great times that we had without being like, let's go back to that.

Because it also touches on a lot of downsides. It covers among other things, you know, a death on the site of the pool parties. So Patrick I think does a great job of staying clear-eyed about the history here, right? It's pros and it's cons. But absolutely, like these photos, this moment, this sort of packaging we put together right of an oral history, like that is so nostalgic. And during the depths of a global pandemic, that ground concerts to a halt, Patrick's oral history was able to do the most amazing thing. It brought people back.

Back to that hyper-specific moment in time in Brooklyn, where you could get away with something. A time when a scrappy production company could influence the music industry from the inside out. A time when the music sounded like gasoline, mixed with pop rocks, and God, we love that shit. It's definitely steeped in like, Gen X, Millennial. Anybody who's kind of around then was into that story. And, you know, I think it did great.

And, you know, I give Eleanor all the credit for attempting to bring these stories out into the world. It's a rough enough business as it is, but when you have great ideas or great stories that go nowhere, it's probably the most frustrating part. Was it was the time and effort worth it? I definitely think so with that because I know that a lot of people got a lot of joy from it. I was very happy when I got out there

and when it hit, because it was like, all right, this was worth it. you