NY 77: The Coolest Year In Hell - Part 1

[upbeat funky jazz music]

[fast paced rock music]

[hip hop music and sirens]

(male news announcer)
The first to die by the killer's gun

was 18 year-old Donna Lauria last July.

[gun shot]

Six months later, Christine Freund

became his second victim.

He's struck six times and police say

they're nowhere near solving the case.

(Sal Abbatiello)
In '77, Son of Sam was running around

and shooting people.

Everybody was scared to death.

(2nd male speaker)
In 1977, we had soaring murder rates.

We had a city that was really

gripped with every form of crime.

(Jonathan Mahler)
The city was dirty.

It was experiencing an epidemic of arson.

It was covered in graffiti.

(Geraldo Rivera)
The city was so broke that City Services had

been cut back profoundly.

(5th male speaker)
They laid off 5,000 cops.

(2nd male speaker)
They closed fire houses.

They laid off thousands of teachers.

(Geraldo Rivera)
Nobody new from day to day whether

the Big Apple would become the Bankrupt Apple.

(Annie Sprinkle)
You had to really hold on to your purse.

There was an element of danger.

But it was also wonderfully sleazy.

(Grandmaster Caz)
Times Square wasn't Disney World.

It was prostitution and pimps.

(7th male speaker)
You know, it was great.

It was like the Wild West.

And it didn't cost anything

to fucking live here.

(Jonathan Mahler)
1977 was the year

of the 25-hour citywide blackout that led

to massive looting and, in fact,

the largest mass arrest in the city's history.

(Mark Riley)
And New York City went through one of the most

contentious mayoral elections in 1977.

And it came to be seen as an election

for the soul of the city in the future.

[techno jazz music]

(2nd female speaker)
People were confused,

disillusioned,

afraid.

All of these emotions

were spawning all kinds of music.

(Mark Riley)
That was the year that disco

exploded in New York.

(9th male speaker)
Back in '77, we took hip hop

from the South Bronx,

brought it into the club.

We never thought it would blow up like it did.

(10th male speaker)
Yeah, 1977 was a big year for punk rock.

(11th male speaker)
There was a buzz at CBGB's.

Everybody wanted to sign punk bands.

(Jonathan Mahler)
It was no coincidence that during this period of

really, kind of, ultimate decay for New York

it was an incredibly exciting place to be.

(3rd female speaker)
It was free, it was open.

You felt like you could do anything you wanted.

(12th male speaker)
Most people thought that New York City's

great days were over.

My attitude was fuck 'em.

[techno jazz music]

(DJ Hollywood)
Cops came through 123rd Street

and they were selling reefer

so fast and so crazy til they

was trying to sell him a bag.

It was open air supermarkets.

Uh, uh, uh '77.

(male off screen)
Was the Bronx burning?

(DJ Hollywood)
Well, the Bronx wasn't burning;

the Bronx was burnt!

[upbeat jazz music and sirens]

(DJ Hollywood)
I mean, it was deteriorating, like,

at a rapid pace, man.

I mean so fast.

Whole areas was just wiped out, man.

(Jellybean Benitez)
Gangs really controlled areas

and a lot of times things would happen

and the police wouldn't even show up.

(Mark Riley)
The gangs gave kids

this sense of cohesion

in what was, otherwise, for many

of them, a completely chaotic world.

(Sal Abbatiello)
Most of the people's parents,

they were struggling, they were broke.

You know, they had two jobs or no job,

or they were strung out themselves on drugs, so

a lot of these kids were monitoring their own life.

You know, they were going to high school

and they were out, you know?

They were on their own, basically.

And the only positive thing we had was music.

[trumpet jazz music]

(Mark Riley)
Hip hop, I believe, came about as a culture

because there was a fairly substantial

group of young people

in African American and Latino communities

that felt that there was nothing there for them.

The public school system,

because of the fiscal crisis at that time,

had abandoned most music

programs throughout the city.

You know?

You couldn't belong to a marching band

in your high school if your high school

didn't have one.

You couldn't go to a Rec Center

if you didn't have a Rec Center.

(DJ Disco Wiz)
We didn't have something

that really belonged to us, you know?

Everybody had their own movement, you know?

And '77 was actually

a breakout showcase year for hip hop.

I went to a Bambaataa party

and I was totally blown away.

Something about seeing that music

channeled out that way

definitely appealed to me.

(KRS - One)
You would follow the vibration of the music

and you would arrive at the block party.

You would see some people

doing graffiti, writing on the wall live.

And there would be people

with cardboard boxes out

doing B-boying.

The center of the party would be the DJ.

Early on, of course, you had people like

Hollywood and Chief Rocka,

Busy Bee and Lovebug Starski.

But Afrika Bambaataa is the godfather of hip hop.

[guitar music]

(Afrika Bambaataa)
I came out of the street gang movement

that we had at the time

which was called The Black Spades.

And my area of the Bronx River Houses

we had a center where I used to play the music.

And many of the youth start feeling the energy

of these DJs, these breakers.

So I went out there and started transforming

the street gangs into something positive.

And it was the culture called hip hop.

(KRS - One)
He comes out of the gang culture,

gets an epiphany,

and begins to organize in his community.

(Sal Abbatiello)
Afrika Bambaataa did an unbelievable job

with, you know, getting all the

youth and the gangs together

to try to not be violent,

to do it through music.

(Grandmaster Caz)
The party that he gave

resonated throughout the neighborhood

and then, soon, throughout the Bronx.

From then on I -

that's all I wanted to do.

(DJ Disco Wiz)
Caz actually took the initiative,

you know what I mean?

And told me, "Listen, man..."

You know, "Do this with me."

You know what I mean?

And once I got behind the turntables

it was something that was overwhelming.

Something that actually took over.

[funky music]

(Grandmaster Caz)
In '77, if you were a DJ

you had to have your own sound system.

I don't mean, like, you just put your records on

and [indiscernible babble].

Oh, no.

You had to have the speakers,

and the amplifiers,

and the turntables,

and everything.

And you brought all of that out

to the park you were playing.

[upbeat jazzy music]

(DJ Disco Wiz)
You know, we were kids, we were teenagers.

And, you know, we really didn't

have that kind of money.

(Grandmaster Caz)
I was lucky

because I had a few dollars

saved in the bank that my father

had left me.

And I had to convince my mother once that -

once I knew that this is what I wanted to do,

"Hey Ma, I need that money."

You know what I mean?

I found what I want to do.

I don't want to go buy sneakers with it,

I don't want to go -

I want to buy some DJ equipment.

I want to be a DJ.

[electric guitar music]

We never would've had the ingenuity

to plug our system up to a light pole,

I don't think, if we was in Omaha.

You understand what I'm saying?

We wouldn't have had the resources I had

and the mindset to say,

"Yo, that's electric light, ain't it?"

"Look in that pole. Look in the bottom, man,

see if there's anything in there."

You know what I mean?

It just takes that kind of mindset

and ingenuity to say,

"Okay, let's find something to make this work."

We didn't have those big

industrial extension cords now.

We had them little nine, six-foot,

nine-foot extension cords.

You had to plug one up to the other.

And we had to buy, like, 15 or 20 of them

and run them all the way from the pole

all the way into the park.

But that's what it took to keep

the party going so that's what we did.

(DJ Disco Wiz)
No one was watching us.

I mean, the police weren't coming

to the park and shutting our parties down.

I mean, if you go to a park now

and try to hotwire a streetlamp into a party,

you'll be shut down in five minutes.

You know what I mean?

I mean, they just were busy doing other things.

You know what I mean?

And thank God for that.

[funky jazz music]

(Annie Sprinkle)
In 1977, New York City was a great place to be

if you wanted to be wild and promiscuous.

Before AIDS you could fuck

onstage in Times Square.

(Josh Alan Friedman)
There were literally 1,200 street walker

prostitutes from 34th Street to 50th Street and 8th avenue.

(Joseph Borelli)
42nd Street was a mess.

You wouldn't take your wife

and walk with your family on 42nd Street,

you really wouldn't.

(Geraldo Rivera)
Times Square was 'anything goes.'

It was a neighborhood where

hustlers intersected with tourists.

And the tourists came out

on the bottom end of that deal for sure.

(13th male speaker)
In Times Square you had the Broadway Theatre

but you had side by side

with that, porno establishments,

massage parlors,

some 200 of them all across 42nd Street.

It was "Girls, Girls, Girls! Upstairs!

Take a ticket! Take a ticket!"

"Psss, psss, Black Beauties, Black Beauties,

Check it out! Check it out!"

(Mark Riley)
I went to a movie premier

called "Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle"

and people were jumping up, giving people

standing ovations after sex scenes.

(Annie Sprinkle)
When you went and saw porn,

you saw it on a giant screen.

I mean the penises were like 150 feet big, you know?

Lots of bushy pussies.

Men had pubic hair up to their navels.

(Geraldo Rivera)
Times Square now compared to Times Square then

is to go from, you know,

something that was X-rated and dangerous

to something now that's G-rated.

I don't think it's bad just

because I saw how bad it was.

(Mayor Abe Beams)
The people of this city

know and understand

the tremendous problems we had

in the last three and a half years.

(Mark Riley)
In 1977, New York City went through one of

its most contentious mayoral primaries

in its history.

(male new announcer)
Several poles say any of the four candidates

could make it.

They are Bella Abzug, Mayor Beame,

Mario Cuomo, or Congressman Koch.

(Ed Koch)
Morning everybody, I'm Ed Koch,

and I'm running for Mayor.

(male news announcer)
At a televised debate the other night,

someone through a pie at Mayor Beame.

Watch.

[splat as pie hits Beame)

(female organizer)
Please, everybody, please sit down.

(Geraldo Rivera)
I remember Abe Beame being

probably the most ineffective

mayor we ever had.

New Yorkers just didn't give a damn about him.

In some ways,

many New Yorkers didn't

give a damn about the city.

Because we felt that,

you know, the city wasn't the city that we knew.

It was the shell of its former self.

(Jonathan Mahler)
It was really a moment when the city

wanted someone who was going to

kind of be tough and get tough.

And who was also going to

lift the spirits of the city, lift the morale of the city.

(male news announcer)
Mayor Abraham Beame is in big trouble.

His principle opponent is the lady

in the floppy hat,

Congresswoman Bella Abzug.

(Bella Abzug)
One of the things you have

to know about all the polls,

they not only show the...

[audio cuts off]