Last Day at the Automat

A chapter of American history quietly drew to a close in New York City on April 9, 1991, when the country’s last Horn & Hardart Automat shut down. During the Depression, there were hundreds of these Automats, mostly in New York City, dispensing macaroni and cheese, baked beans, and coconut cream pies from their famous windowed, coin-operated compartments. David Isay visited the last of them, on 200 East 42nd Street, on the day it closed.

Recorded in New York City.

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.

Cynical Santa

It’s early in the morning at Santa central, an auditorium in the headquarters of the Volunteers of America, New York’s largest supplier of Santas. For 80 years now, the Volunteers of America has been placing down-on-their-luck Santas on the streets of midtown Manhattan to raise money for charity.

In one corner of the auditorium sits a thin, moustached, half-dressed Santa hunched intently over the day’s racing form. His graying hair is cut short, he’s missing a front tooth, and his face furrows deeply each time he frowns — which he does a lot — as he suits up for the day’s work. This is Eddie Surwinski. Not your typical Kris Kringle, he prefers to be known as Cynical Santa. And at 8:15 precisely, he’s out the door.

Recorded in New York City. Premiered December 23, 1990, on All Things Considered.

Dan Field, Marriage Broker

For more than seventy years, Field’s Exclusive Service in midtown Manhattan has been arranging marriages for people of all ages, professions, and religions. According to Dan Field, who now runs the business, it all started in Russia with his grandfather, the Rabbi Joseph Field, who had a knack for matchmaking. When the family immigrated to New York in 1917, Rabbi Field decided to turn his gift into a business: Field’s Exclusive Service. He gave it the no-nonsense slogan, “I Can Arrange.”

In 1930, Rabbi Field retired and passed the business on to Dan’s uncle Irving Field (author of the matchmaking opus How to Marry and Find Love and Happiness). Dan Field took over in the ’60s. Since then, he has arranged thousands of marriages.

“I work seven days a week, eighty hours a week. No gimmicks, no nothing — the real old-fashioned way!” Field explains. “I have more than eighty thousand people to choose from — from sixteen to eighty-five. I have all walks of life, all over the world. All religion, all race. I have poor ones, I have rich ones. I have high society, millionaires, models, actors, actresses. I have high class, I have medium. It’s a department store in here. Whoever comes in here, they give me an order, I deliver!”

Recorded in New York City. Premiered February 11, 1990, on Weekend All Things Considered.

Remembering Stonewall

On Friday, June 27, 1969, eight officers from the public morals section of the first division New York City Police Department pulled up in front of the Stonewall Inn, one of the city’s largest and most popular gay bars.

At the time, the vice squad routinely raided gay bars. Patrons always complied with the police, frightened by the prospect of being identified in the newspaper. But this particular Friday night was different. It sparked a revolution, and a hidden subculture was transformed into a vibrant political movement. What began with a drag queen clobbering her arresting officer soon escalated into a full-fledged riot, and modern gay activism was born.

This documentary, broadcast on the 20th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, is the first documentary — in any medium — about the riots. It weaves together the perspectives of the participants, from Deputy Inspector Seymour Pine, who marshaled the raid, to Sylvia Rivera, one of the drag queens who battled most fiercely that night. The revolutionary impact of the riot is better understood by looking at life for gay men and lesbians in the era before Stonewall, seen through the eyes of people like Bruce Merrow and Geanne Harwood, a gay couple who have been together for 60 years, and Jheri Faire, an 80-year-old lesbian. Remembering Stonewall also examines how Stonewall affected gay politics through the voices of people like Randy Wicker, the first openly gay person to appear on television and radio; Joan Nestle, founder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives; and yippie leader Jim Fouratt, who helped found the Gay Liberation Front on the third night of the Stonewall Riots.

Premiered July 1, 1989, on Weekend All Things Considered.

Update on Remembering Stonewall

Sylvia Rivera, a drag queen who led the charge at the Stonewall Riots when she was 17, sent in the following update on July 4, 2001:

Since May, I’ve been the food director at the Metropolitan Community Church food pantry. My girlfriend Julia is my assistant and my computer person (because I still don’t know a damn thing about these new modern contraptions of yours!). We have also been rather busy with the resurrection of Street Transgender Action Revolutionaries and are planning protests around the trail of Amanda Milan’s assassins. So between the jobs and politics, you know how frantic it is. One of our main goals right now is to destroy the Human Rights Campaign, because I’m tired of sitting on the back of the bumper. It’s not even the back of the bus anymore — it’s the back of the bumper. The bitch on wheels is back.

Revolutionary love,
Sylvia Rivera