The Sunshine Hotel

This is an audio portrait of one of the final vestiges of the Bowery, New York’s notorious skid row. In the first half of the century, the mile-long Bowery’s bars, missions and cheap hotels (or flophouses) were home to an estimated 35,000 down-and-out men each night. Today, only a handful of flophouses, virtually unchanged for half a century, are all that remain of this once teeming world.

For several months in 1998, David Isay and Stacy Abramson had unprecedented 24-hour access to the Sunshine Hotel, one of the last of the no-frills establishments. “It was like stepping into King Tut’s Tomb,” Isay says. “The Sunshine is this fascinating, self-contained society full of unbelievable characters. While it’s a profoundly sad place, it is, at the same time, home to men with powerful and poetic stories.”

The Sunshine Hotel was awarded the Prix Italia, Europe’s oldest and most prestigious broadcasting award, in 1999.

Recorded in New York City. Premiered September 18, 1998, on All Things Considered.

Update on The Sunshine Hotel

Nathan Smith, manager of the Sunshine Hotel, wrote the following update on March 13, 2001:

Naturally things have changed since the broadcast of The Sunshine Hotel in 1998. The Bowery has changed, the Sunshine among the final six of the remaining flophouses on the Bowery. Renovation is the name of the game in SoHo. The mayor envisions a huge apartment complex and sports plaza from Confucius Plaza to 6th Street. The pending invisible memory of the Sunshine, located some two thirds of the way between the two streets along Third Avenue, the trolley and el gone with everything else of yesterday’s memories.

The hotel has changed as to its population: Vinny and his birds are gone. L.A.’s gone. The guy on the tape who says he doesn’t want to die in the hotel was found sitting up in bed, dead, looking straight ahead through sightless eyes. Here you witness the ignominy of death — Vinny dropped dead in the street that morning; L.A., grotesque in the dim light, a look of shock on his face; Anthony, all 425 pounds of him, died from diabetes in Beth Israel Hospital.

Yeah, they’re all gone. But there are some success stories, like a former porter becoming a social worker and car owner. Another of our car owners had his stolen three weeks after he bought it. It wasn’t new anyway, even if it was a Cadillac. Prince Street is becoming very trendy. The wise guys are gone but in keeping up the flavor of the former neighborhood, they shot and killed the manager of Connecticut Muffin. You’re hard pressed to see winos anymore, but you will see a smattering of the emotionally distressed, like “One Can” Kerry raving in the street harmlessly, closing in of the day somebody will beat him up. But he proves the adage that God protects drunks and babies, though sometimes that seems little more than a charming statement.

Yes, the Bowery and the hotel have changed. Fast coming are the days when all of this will be no more than a chapter in someone’s book of memories of days gone by.

Nathan Smith

This documentary comes from Sound Portraits Productions, a mission-driven independent production company that was created by Dave Isay in 1994. Sound Portraits was the predecessor to StoryCorps and was dedicated to telling stories that brought neglected American voices to a national audience.

Miguel Algarin, Nuyorican Poet

Miguel Piñero and Miguel Algarín, co-founders of the Nuyorican Poet’s Café, had made a pact: Piñero would write a poem specifying in detail the arrangements to follow his death, and Algarín, when the time came, would faithfully carry out his friend’s instructions:

Just once before I die
I want to climb up on a
tenement sky
to dream my lungs out till
I cry
then scatter my ashes thru
the Lower East Side.

So begins Miguel Piñero’s last wishes and paean to Manhattan’s Lower East Side. After Miguel Piñero died on June 14, 1988, Algarín led a grand procession in which Piñero’s ashes were scattered across his beloved Lower East Side. This is the story of that procession.

Recorded in New York City. Premiered June 21, 1998, on Weekend Edition.

A Letter to Butchie

Jeannie Reilly was a heroin addict and prostitute who worked the streets of New York Citys Lower East Side. In 1994, she made a resolution: she would get off drugs, get off the streets, and pull her life together, so that one day she might reunite with the son she had abandoned as a baby.

Producer David Isay used to live and work on a block that Reilly frequented, and the two became friends. After Reilly was released from jail for the last time, she began recording a series of audio letters to her son. Reilly was HIV-positive at the time, and she started the project because she did not know if she’d ever have the opportunity to speak to her son in person.

Jeannie died of pneumonia on September 11, 1997, having spent the last three years of her life clean. She never saw her son again before she died. This is her audio letter to him.

Recorded in New York City. Premiered December 31, 1997, on All Things Considered.

Looking for Mary

Prompted by the enormous increase in sightings of the Virgin Mary in every region of the United States, Looking for Mary is reported by Beverly Donofrio, who, like many Catholics, regards Mary as a central figure in her spiritual life. But like many Americans, Donofrio has long been fascinated by — and skeptical of — people who claim they are speaking to Mary. So in February, 1997, she set off on a physical journey, visiting apparition sites across the United States, and a spiritual journey, trying to understand the role that Mary has played in her own life.

This documentary examines the phenomenon of men and women experiencing visions of the Virgin Mary from Donofrio’s intimate perspective. Producer David Isay, associate producer Stacy Abramson and writer Donofrio take listeners to apparition sites around the country — from New York and California to Georgia and Arizona — speaking to people who believe they are communicating with the Blessed Mother.

Recorded in New York City. Premiered December 6, 1997, on Weekend Edition Saturday.

Folksbiene Yiddish Theater

The Folksbiene Yiddish Theatre, the longest-running Yiddish theatre company in the world, was formed in 1915 as a response to the light, escapist fare then on offer to immigrant audiences, and its commitment to high-quality Yiddish-language theater continued through the decades. It was sustained by two of the company’s veteran members — Morris Adler, who joined the company in 1934, and Zypora Spaisman, who joined twenty years later. During their tenure, the Folksbiene became a bastion for Yiddish theater and culture.

Morris Adler stopped performing in 1985 to become President Emeritus of the company. He passed away on December 27, 2001, at the age of 107. Zypora Spaisman eventually became the artistic director and remained the company’s lead actress until 1999. She passed away on May 18, 2002. In this American Talker piece, Adler and Spaisman remember the roughly half century they each spent with the Folksbiene Yiddish Theater.

Recorded in New York City. Premiered December 1, 1996, on Weekend Edition Saturday.

Reggie Jones, Lifeguard

Reggie Jones has been a lifeguard at 2-West on Jones Beach since 1944. In this American Talkers segment, Reggie tells of the grueling training and tryouts he went through to get his job. After lasting for over three unpaid weeks while competing with over 100 other beach-bound hunks, Reggie exults when he is picked from the crowd: “I thought I had won the Olympics. I said ‘Yes! Yes! There is a God.”

Recorded in New York City. Premiered July 7, 1996, on Weekend Edition Sunday.

All the Way Broken

All The Way Broken is the audio diary of Iolene Catalano, a former heroin addict and prostitute. She was born on May 10, 1948, in a carnival trailer in Pennsylvania. Her mother was an exotic dancer and her father ran a crooked carnival concession. She spent her childhood in orphanages, reform schools, and mental institutions. By age twenty, she was living on the streets of New York City as a prostitute, thief, and some-time rock-and-roll singer. Iolene was diagnosed with HIV one month after she shot heroin for the last time.

Together Catalano and producer David Isay recorded more than thirty hours of interviews. In April 1994, Iolene had a breakdown. She was admitted to Roosevelt Hospital in New York City, and the project was suspended. Throughout her illness, Catalano kept a tape recorder by her bed-side. At night, she’d have a nurse tape a microphone to her chest so that she could record her thoughts before she fell asleep.

Iolene died at Roosevelt Hospital on June 3, 1994. She was clean for the last eight years of her life. All The Way Broken won a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award in 1996.

Premiered September 9, 1995, on Weekend All Things Considered.

The Gods of Times Square

There is no place in the world like Times Square. Located in midtown Manhattan, it teems with people — hardened New Yorkers and wide-eyed tourists, commuters and shoppers, theater-goers and merchants, prostitutes and policemen. Shining down are shimmering lights, flashing signs, towering billboards, and epileptic neon. And amid the throngs, illuminated by the fluorescence of consumerisms most triumphant block, walk the countless religious zealots who consider Times Square their concrete pulpit.

In 1992, photographer Richard Sandler began a video documentary to capture these street prophets in their unnatural habitat. He was guided by the question of why people would come to Times Square to inquire into the nature of god, to argue, to pray, and to convert. In 1994, after shooting more than 100 hours of videotape, he realized that there was not enough money to complete the film. Sandler shifted his focus from Times Squares sights to its sounds, collaborating with producer David Isay to create this radio documentary from his video footage. In 1999 Sandler finished his video, The Gods of Times Square, which has since won numerous film festivals.

Recorded in Times Square, New York City. Premiered December 23, 1994, on All Things Considered.

Joe Franklin

Joe Franklin, the man credited with creating the television talk show, has hosted over 28,000 episodes of The Joe Franklin Show and has interviewed over 150,000 guests, some famous and some . . . not. From his Times Square office filled with chaos and clutter, he fields about 1,000 calls a day from hopefuls hoping to land a spot on his show. “Of course, most of them can’t be on, but I hate to hurt their feelings so I never say ‘good-bye.’ I just hang up. So that way they feel the conversation hangs in limbo until we chat again.”

Over the years, Sound Portraits producers have met some pretty impressive characters. Unbelievable characters. But the greatest of them all is Joe Franklin. Just give a call to his office (the number’s listed) and you’ll see: “Hello? Who’s this?” he’ll ask. “[Fill in your name], my friend!” he’ll exclaim, as if he’s known you all his life. “Listen to me closely now. Whatever you want, it’s automatic. Listen, [Fill in your name] — I’m very busy. Very busy. Call me back at three o’clock exactly. You swear? Don’t forget now — very important. Critical! God bless you.” SLAM.

Recorded in New York City. Premiered September 8, 1991, on All Things Considered.

Ward 2-West

Ward 2-West presents an honest and direct profile of twenty-six men, all found “not guilty by reason of insanity,” all incarcerated at Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center, a hospital for the criminally insane located on Ward’s Island near Manhattan.

Ward 2-West houses a group of men who have committed some of the most notorious and gruesome crimes in New York City’s history. Are people capable of committing monstrous acts of cruelty monsters themselves? In 1990, Producer David Isay spent one week, day and night, with the men of Ward 2-West to better understand the circumstances behind such extreme criminal behavior. Isay found that nearly every patient at Kirby had lived a life of almost unspeakable physical and mental abuse before committing his own crime.

The sensitive portraits that emerge from the documentary present disturbed men whose personal suffering cannot be denied — they speak with hauntingly human voices that we would all rather forget.

Recorded in Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Hospital, New York City. Premiered August 25, 1991, on SoundPrint.