And That's Why We Drink - E369 Frankenstein's Monster's Ghost and Grunge Justice

Episode Date: March 3, 2024

It's episode 369, but, wait, what episode is it again? We need a gentle reminder. This week Em inducts us into the lifestyles of the rich, the famous and the haunted with a story of the infamous Dakota apartment building in New York City. Then Christine pays lovely tribute to a true punk legend gone too soon, Mia Zapata of the Gits. And show us a satanist we wouldn't want to hang out with... and that's why we drink!We're in the home stretch of our On the Rocks tour! Don't miss the last live shows of this tour, get your tickets at andthatswhywedrink.com

all right all right all right all right uh i would like everyone to know what the routine is when we get on here oh yeah please enlighten me well you know it everybody else if you're wondering what it's what it looks like five seconds before we get on every time almost 400 episodes okay now christine likes to just okay well maybe if you wanted to step up and do one you could do it too do to step up and do what okay i thought you were going to complain about how I do the ready, set, go or whatever. Oh, I wasn't going to complain about it. I was going to compliment it. But we could get nasty if you'd like.

Damn. Were you? I don't know. In the past, you've really made some faces. So I was just reading between the lines. But anyway, go ahead. Christine likes to just double check with everybody every time. You, but yes everybody

me and then like a distant Eva's ears I suppose maybe yeah like to let all of us know just in case we're gonna press record and we're gonna go at the same time that the zoom goes what the video feature goes and every time

which is interesting I do black out right before and what i so it is helpful and what i would like to say is it's interesting how it mirrors the five seconds after we record which is every single time christine forgets what episode we were we just covered oh oh after we record yes after we hang out or like after the episode ends then m has to announce the number i have to say the episode number so christine knows how to title and then four seconds later i go what was it 622 and you're like no i said 371 and i'm like oh okay so it takes a couple times to really register but i do thank you for your uh service in that regard i i think it's interesting that you're always

just giving gentle reminders right before, right before, not even a whole minute before. And then I always give a gentle reminder immediately after, not even a minute after. Yeah. I'm the one who needs a reminder. I think I don't really know how to start the timing. I mean, I think we're supposed to clap also. And I just, I, it gives me so much anxiety to do the clap that I don't do it. And don't know if I mean Jack let us know are we making your life a living hell I'm not sure um I don't know it seems to work so far let's keep doing it well someone's clearly in better spirits than last week I mean I am I'm drinking tea which just never happens and you know that it's not a good sign right like if i'm drinking tea and not coffee something is awry so you're still not feeling good i'm feeling like trash but i'm

better i'm better i'm better i'm better i think the thing now is that i'm just like so deeply nauseous and i yes to answer your question i have taken 72 pregnancy tests because i'm just paranoid at this point oh i didn't even think about that. I sure did. I've been nauseated for days and it's just getting worse because I can't really eat. And so I think I'm hungry. But then, like, if I try to eat, I just get sick. Anyway, so I'm drinking tea.

Like, what the fuck is that all about? Anyway, so I'm okay. I'm just really nauseous, i'm not pregnant so huzzah that's the good news folks leona reigns for another day all right literally yesterday in the car leona said my whole family is here and i said yeah it's mommy and daddy and you're in the she said and i'm the baby and i in my went, knowing I was going to go home and take a pregnancy test, was like, oh, God, please stay that. Please be the baby. I can't do it.

Manifest that, girl. That's exactly right. Yeah, girl, you stay the baby for now, okay? And so thank God. She's still the baby. And I'm still a big baby. And my womb is empty. And I'm so thrilled.

But I can only drink tea. So you know what? What good is it? I can't even drink wine because I'm um my womb is empty and I'm so thrilled uh but I can only drink tea so you know what what good is it I can't even drink wine because I'm so ill so you know what so you might as well be pregnant you might as well be pregnant nope don't say that take that back nope no from the universe anyway okay how are you Em I am in better spirits you're right as you can tell I even put makeup on because last time I went downstairs and Blaze said you look really nice today and i said really m tell me i look like shit i didn't mean it but i will say it was also through a camera you're about this big on my screen right now so maybe i was wrong but i also i think i just heard it in your voice how miserable you were that any perception of you was going to be bad.

It was very funny because Blaze said it right afterward and I went, is that like his thing? Does he like my sickly Victorian look? Maybe that's what I need to. Maybe he's a little dastardly like that. Maybe he's into that. Dastardly. That feels like something Blaze would be. You're not.

You're not. No. I'm very modern. I'm like, get with the program, Christine. Let's go. Put on some fucking rouge okay come on um how are you well well not pregnant also so um i haven't checked i just got a feeling oh god thank god yeah you know when you know you know uh no i don't because

i'm constantly in a state of like is it possible and then the world's like no you're like you just had a baby four hours ago and i'm like but you never know i gotta say people who are heterosexual and active i would also be terrified constantly i don't think you get enough um i think from from the day i became sexually active, there are texts going back to like 20 whatever year with Renee that are just like, phew, phew, phew, like every couple months. And there wasn't even, it was like we were practicing, like I practice safe sex, okay? It's just like, you know, there's that 0.01% chance, right? And you would be the one who gets that situation. Thank you.

You get it. I'd be terrified if I were you. I don't know how you live in constant fear. I don't either. Anyway, I will, the day will, if I ever get pregnant, that will be a day to really just, the fear will ignite and I won't even, the world will absolutely just shiver. I can't wait for that. I can't, just kidding. I can and I won't even the world will will absolutely just shiver i can't wait for that i can't just kidding i can and i don't want it oh how am i doing um i'm sleepy we're recording earlier than usual um i i mean it's not your

fault i also uh we're living in chaos because we just got sprayed uh last week for the roaches and so we're just living in piles currently because everything had to be like all of our food anything that's ever been in a cabinet is all shoved into the fridge or the freezer or the microwave like it just like it's just it's just a little chaotic okay but be be careful when you turn the oven on. Cause I've done that where I stored things in the oven and then I preheated the oven. I mean, do we not remember like episode one when my very first roommate on this episode like left a toaster in the oven or something?

That Egyptian guy set your kitchen on fire. I forgot about that. He melted it. He melted everything in there. Well, I melted everything in there, but it's because he left everything in there and I didn't. He left a toaster in the oven. Who does that?

In hindsight, unbeknownst to me, apparently that's a cultural thing. I've been told that that's by a few people that apparently just a lot of people that are Egyptian have used ovens as extra storage which i guess makes sense it does but at the time i've done it many times i think it makes perfect sense but i've just ended up with a fire extinguisher you know as part of the problem as part of the solution and yeah it never even occurred to me that it i i get it but i had not lived with that experience

before and i was just yeah just melted everything and you know it's like when they say like go out and live in the world yeah go learn something go live in the world you get it go learn a thing or two and then like at the end of your days you're on your deathbed you're like wow i learned that sometimes in egypt you use an oven as storage and sometimes my friend christine did that also uh yeah so you know what we've we've really grown as people on this earth i think thank god first lesson check it off um check and what else i i mean i don't really have anything going on right now i'm about to go uh to pittsburgh before you do a little exploring yeah wait are you flying out tonight yeah wow like a red eye yeah which i'm kind of upset about i wanted to leave earlier because now i'm only gonna have one full day before pittsburgh to do stuff i like to try to

do at least one and a half if not two um and i think i'm probably gonna because i'm there's a lot on my itinerary i'd like to get done and i'm not gonna be able to do it i'm really struggling with like like just fucking relaxing i liked i think i've been using travel as like a place to focus my hyper fixations and i've been thinking like oh like i'm really gonna take advantage of travel this year and i'm really gonna take advantage of the fact that we're going to so many cities that are really cool that i've never been to and i want to explore so if i only get a certain window of time i have to really carpe diem like make the most of it yeah yeah yeah yeah i got you so then that adds the pressure of like letting things slip

through the cracks i've been waking up super early and going to bed super late just trying to do as many things as possible because i don't know when i'll be back in that city to a point where i'm now like falling asleep backstage because i'm like you literally we were sitting there i'm not kidding even not i'm only talking about because you brought it up well it's not gonna put you on the spot but now i will uh even told me later it's like you fell asleep backstage and i like didn't even notice myself not are you serious okay you were apparently like yeah yeah my friend you were we were sitting there just having a perfectly normal conversation like literally 25 minutes before the show um what show was that that was

when we were up in that makeshift green room and they brought us all that great cheese see that's how i remember shows i don't know what town i'm in ever but i know it was great yeah we remember them by the green rooms yeah so we were back there and we were like, even I were coloring the tarot cards, you got her and having a grand old time and talking real loud. And then all of a sudden you hear, and we look over and I don't even mean over. Like, I mean,

we're all three sitting in a little circle and M is just sitting there in a chair with their head back and just like old man in a Barker lounger, like asleep. And even i just like look at each other and kind of start laughing but then we're like getting a little loud but then it's very clear you're not going to wake up no matter what so we just went back to our activities but you really were just snoozing and then even i were so nervous because we were like we don't want to wake up wake him up two minutes before the show then they're going to have like a freak out, you know, because they adjusted to the waking world.

Their body is left building. So I don't know. You eventually woke yourself up and we just pretended like we didn't see you just snore for 10 minutes, but it looked like quite a delightful power nap you got, you know? Yeah. Well, I, yeah, I don't really know what happened there. Although, I mean, Yeah, well, I don't really know what happened there. Although, I mean, I've been trying this thing where I'm like, for a long time up until this tour, I have been so, truly I don't know another word, but catatonic, paralyzed with fear.

There doesn't need to be another word. Catatonic encapsulates the there doesn't need to be another word catatonic is encapsulates the entire essence of your being i'm like i'm not who like what you're hearing and and to all the people who like are writing online like oh i'd love to meet you if you ever met me right before a show you you i'm not and some have and some have and i feel bad i still think about them i'm like oh my god they got the worst experience ever no because, you always apologize, which is so sweet. You're like, I'm sorry I'm like this right now. You're always very, very kind and understanding. But yeah, you really aren't feeling it. Well, I've always been like I've been I'm trying really hard.

Shout out to Jordan. All the therapy is like going OK so far. I'm like, I feel like I'm a different person backstage than I have been in the past. You are. And one of the things that I'm trying to do is instead of in the past, I would just like lie in the hotel room and just like think about like, like at some point today I have to leave the hotel and get in a car and go to the theater and and yeah your anxiety is just cycling and cycling and cycling yeah yeah so now i'm trying to do a thing where like i force myself to leave the hotel room and the show just feels like another thing for the day where it just feels like i like that it's like an errand essentially yeah which like not that i don't want other people to think, you know, anything negative on that, but I think my brain has to treat it as something smaller than it is.

So I've been trying to, I've been trying to do a lot of stuff before and after I'm like, Oh, I'm going to have a whole day. And then I'm going to get to the theater. I do a quick little show, quick little show, quick little show. And then I'm like, going to go to the bars and I'm going to go out and try this restaurant. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay okay i forgot about this and this is so funny because

i meant to bring this up blaze and i were just talking about this and he reminded me because i had been drinking so i was like i don't totally i mean i wasn't blacked out but i was like there was so much going on i didn't really remember but blaze remembered in chicago the day of the show what it was so funny the day the place still talked about the day of the show uh so we did the show in chicago it was great it was awesome my sister came um i found a peephole and like looked at everybody inappropriately like a little pervert it was a whole thing anyway we'll talk about that another time but as we were leaving the car was waiting outside and uh so we all get in the car and em is like oh i'm and blaze uh came to the yeah blaze came to the show as well so he got in the car with us and my sister and we're all heading back to the hotel and em is like oh i'm

gonna go out and see some bars tonight and go bar hopping and see some sights and i'm like i'm going to go out and see some bars tonight and go bar hopping and see some sites. And I'm like, I'm going to bed. And so we're on our way back and we're about to, the car's about to start. And Em goes, oh, wait, I just realized that the first place I want to visit is only 150 feet from here. And so like Em like yeets themselves out of the car and says, hey, you take the suitcase. And I'm like, okay. And Em runs off. Right. So we're about to get going.

We're like, all right, I think we're all set. Let's go. And like the guy turns runs off right so we're about to get going we're like all right I think we're all set let's go and like the guy turns the car on we're about to go and M comes running back leans through into the back row of seats and goes Christine can I have ten dollars for cover and I'm like what am I your dad so I'm like okay so I like go through my bag and I mean it's tour money like it's money that like is a communal for us to use. So it wasn't like I was like loony, but you were like, can I have $10? And so it was like,

here's $10. Go buy yourself an ice cream. And you go running off into the middle of the night, like at 1130 at night. And Blaze was like, it was the wildest thing. Em just ran back and asked you for 10 bucks and then just fucking bolted off to, off to, I don't know, see the sights.

Go live the nightlife, you know? I do remember thinking. I was like, I don't know. I was like, I don't think they've ever seen me run before. But I was running because I knew I was about to miss the car. You were running. You were like, I need that 10 bucks for cover. And I was like, first of all, the fact that you don't drink and they still want to cover from you is incredibly rude.

Yeah. Well, hey, I can agree to that for sure. Oh, wait wait i guess it's not because you're not going to spend the money on booze so maybe they want you to spend the money on anyway i definitely spend more money on a cover than i do on my own mocktail that's four dollars but true but i do think it's funny that like first of all i never have cash on me ever um i know you would think covers these days they would just have like the square and be like just you'd think so because i i was so shook that i even had 10 bucks but it's only because willie nelson has been apparently giving gas money to artists who are touring and so sometimes we go to a show and a venue's like oh willie nelson gave this to you and we're like what and they're like

well he gave it to everybody not just you but But it feels very special. Willie Nelson is responsible for like half of the tour merch I have now. And like, yeah, he's given us laundry bags for our suitcases. Game changer. They even say on the road again, because I guess he's doing this like thing with venues where he's like helping pay kind of like offset the cost of like gas and things like that for when you're touring. So it's been awesome. But basically, Willie Nelson, I call him Uncle uncle billiam but he paid for your cover i i just kind of was the middleman so to speak you know when that gets lost in translation yes willie nelson did come to a bar with me and he he paid my cover charge it was so nice it was so thoughtful of him

um he wants you to have a good time so I'm glad you're exploring more and having a, it seems to me as an outsider, but it seems like you have really been, I don't know, finding, finding your chutzpah again. Well, thank you.

All that to say, I'm a little, I'm a little bummed that I'm not going to be having the amount of time that I would usually like in Pittsburgh. Cause one day does not feel like enough. Well, I'm four hours from my house and I love Pittsburgh. so if you ever want to do a little roadie trip you could do a little roadie trip in the direction of the show you have the next day and you could

come hang out with me I am I'm flying out tomorrow oh I thought you were coming in the next day okay no I'm flying tomorrow fine you you win win that one. Now you're trapped. Now you're trapped into hanging out with me. Quickly, let's talk about a story before it gets even hotter in here all of a sudden. Change the subject. Oh, God. Okay, I do have a really,

a story for you. One that I spent quite a lot of time on and I'm very excited about. I don't know how this hasn't been covered before but we are covering the Dakota. Is that a boat?

It sounds like a boat but it's not. I don't know what that is. I don't expect you to know. Okay. This is a building on Central Park West and West 72nd Street in New York. I've heard of this. Oh, so you do know what's going on. I think so.

A little tiny bit. Okay. I tried to add in a lot of fun facts for you. I can't wait. Okay. So this building was established in 1880 and was finished in 1884. Like it took those four years to be built. It's called the Dakota Building and it's a luxury apartments for the rich and famous. That's why I know about it.

Apparently very haunted. Remember when I knew about it, but really I thought it was a boat. So clearly I don't know anything about it. The range of knowledge in the last two minutes from you has been interesting because you went from I don't know to aha, aha, here we are. I'm rich and famous. So I sure do know. You're definitely not rich or famous enough for the Dakota. I'll tell you that.

They would laugh in your face. Once again, let me clarify. I thought it was a big boat. So I am not the person to ask. I think if you tried to go in there, they would say, you're not welcome here, but there is an old dirty boat. You could probably sleep on something. Oh, you're looking for that Dakota. Yes. Please go under one of the bridges. You'll find it there. Uh, there. So this building was originally headed by edward clark who was the sewing machine magnate there had to be one uh he what about singer he founded the

singer manufacturing company okay okay okay uh this building was also designed by the same guy who did the plaza hotel and the waldorf astoria ooh la la so immediately swanky edward clark said this is what we're doing and it's gonna be big and it's gonna have beautiful little crown molding probably probably uh the complex originally had 65 apartments um but when i say apartments i don don't obviously mean my, like, dirty roach-infested apartment. I mean, like, these apartments are... With a toaster in the stove. Like, these apartments are Gossip Girl apartments, where, like, they're... I've never understood.

It's such a baffling concept to me when rich people are living in obviously not an actual apartment and call it an apartment i get that it's like stacked homes on in one building i get it do you think they call it an apartment or is there another word for it like serena vanderwoodson did on gossip girl she did okay yeah well that's that's that then that answers that question i don't know any tighter source so true um but yeah and they call it apartments all throughout every note that i found i mean they call them apartments and but apparently there was supposed to be 65 of them each of these apartments ranged from four bedrooms poor gross to like 20 rooms each all right acceptable yeah um so originally 65 each with like let's say

an average of like a dozen rooms each and now instead of 65 apartments it's 103 because the stables that came with this remember was built in the 1880s so they needed a place for their horses uh those that's the stables have now been turned into their own condo so they added even more apartments after that oh my one source said that this building is nicknamed the Dracula instead of the Dakota because of its dark, menacing appearance. And it does look kind of like it's a little spooky. It's like gothic style? Very gothic, yeah. But it does have, obviously, all the modern amenities.

It's essentially a five-star resort. They had all the things that the Vanderwoodsons would love, like clay tennis courts, grass croquet courts, a rose garden, soundproof walls, fireproof staircases, room service, a restaurant inside, a laundry system or a laundry service, a gym 24-7 around the clock housekeeping staff elevator operators and it had its own in-house power plant so the ac would never go out or the heat would never go out okay my priority is the laundry i don't really care about anything else but the laundry service man i could use that i could use that too but also i wonder if they even have well in the 1880s i was like where are their own washing machines why do they have to have shared laundry. Well, in the 1880s, I was like, where are their own washing machines? Why do they have to have shared laundry services? I understand. In the 1880s. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. The building also has original gas lamps from when the building was built. Whoa. And they're still at the front entrance. And their boilers are so powerful that they could heat everything in a four block radius if it wanted to. Oh, my God. But they don't want to.

But they don't. We could help others, but we won't. No, no, no. But why would we? Fun fact, Edward Clark, the founder of this place, his apartment here, this is so fucking bougie, had sterling silver floors. What? So they have to polish the fucking floors to make sure they don't tarnish that's what i was gonna say can you imagine the polishing i can't imagine a more inconvenient

floor i mean truly like the worst best like if you're looking for like the most obnoxious like proof of status that's it yeah like you would have to hire again around the clock care for your floor and like also would always smell like shoe polish it would be silver polish they'd be just like down there like tiny little part of it would always look like gross because they're just scrubbing into it and also are they on their hands and knees unless he created sure these unless he created some oversized yeah mop or something i doubt it i'm sure they were down there yeah um another fun fact i mentioned that there were fireproof stairs what i meant by that is that the architect wanted to avoid fire escapes yikes oh sure so unsightly which i one probably because they're unsightly two the i think the plan from the beginning was the rich and famous would be living here and so i

think it was supposed to be like a safety thing in terms of creepy people oh to climb up okay gotcha gotcha gotcha gotcha like let's not let's not let people be able to get in any other way except through the front door. Gotcha, okay. But still, this place is just like a walking fire hazard. Right, right. So they fireproofed the stairs. The architect literally, there's a quote, slathered mud from Central Park between the layers of brick flooring. What?

Just to give it extra insulation or something i mean it soundproofed it and fireproofed them so sure i do like the idea of a whole building for the rich and famous already being soundproofed because can you imagine the gatsby parties and if you're a musician if you're a musician you know that you're not going to bother your tenants yeah i like that that's a fun little and if you're a if you're a wealthy serial killer nobody right no one will hear your screams exactly that's right so anyway the building somehow since the beginning has not needed fire escapes which is lovely but there are 10 floors and over 100 apartments and no fire escapes so when the day comes we'll hear when okay whoa i mean ominous not to be that's a b i mean it's amazing there

hasn't been a single well i'm sure nowadays right since they have to have like but they have to have like updated it to code right like legally somehow i don't know maybe i i don't know i didn't look that far i didn't want to know i like the mystery okay um another fun fact because this place does look a little creepy this building was did all the exterior shots for the movie rosemary's baby that's why i've heard of it and not that i've seen that film obviously but uh i have i've listened to an episode on this i think lore or something but it was a very short one so i i only know the bare bones well yeah so in the book rosemary's baby that i guess the movie was adapted from in the book the hotel or the apartment complex is called the Bramford. And I was a little confused.

There was one source that I think said that the Bramford was inspired by this building. Like this is literally the Bramford that someone wrote about and just changed the name in the book. Or this building just looked so similar to what people thought the bramford would look like that they filmed the i see okay so i don't know chicken or the egg i don't know which one but anyway this is if you've wanted to see it before if you've watched rosemary's baby you have seen it notable residents who have been here uh because these are like the upper class of the upper class the the echelon upper echelon if you will notable residents of the dakota have been and since this started in the 1880s these

are people that maybe we don't know but they were very famous for their time lauren bacall who was um Humphrey Bogart's mom. The Steinway family of Steinway pianos. Pianos. The author Harlan Coben, Bono, Tchaikovsky, Boris Karloff, who was Frankenstein. Which is so interesting that Frankenstein moved into the Dracula.acula the gothic yeah the dracula yeah true rosemary clooney or george clooney's mom rosemary's baby rosemary's baby connie chung judy garland and mr maury povich shut the fuck up he he made it i don't know how but he made it come on maury okay um now here are some

celebrities who have been rejected um which is wild because when i think of like maury povich i'm like in my mind even though he's rich and famous i'm like the echelon is dropping i think i feel like it's not like this he's rich and famous but i yeah i would say he maybe doesn't have like the echelon is dropping i think i feel like it's not like this he's rich and famous but i yeah i would say he maybe doesn't have like the same status uh the air in the social sphere yeah yeah yeah um but so he made it but guess who didn't make it share no way guess who didn't make it billy joel guess who didn't make it madonna and they're all singers is that something i don't know maybe maybe the the property managers really liked watching maury you know maybe maybe the soundproofing wore off they're like we're not chair get out of here right exactly

that mud in the in the floor doesn't really work very well. We've been there. Cher, Billy Joel, Madonna, Carly Simon, Alex Rodriguez, or A-Rod, Judd Apatow, and power couple Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffith, who, by the way, have a daughter named Dakota. Dakota Johnson. And I just watched her awful, awful movie, Madam Web. I saw your TikTok. Beyond. I mean, I wouldn't know. I love Dakota, though.

I love her. Her interviews for this movie are hysterical because you can tell that she's just she's just fulfilling a contract. Like she clearly I think she also is not super stoked about this movie. Yeah, I saw your TikTok about it. I didn't know what was happening, but I read the comments and kind of figured it out. But there were comments like, oh, poor Dakota. It's very clear that I think she needed the paycheck or wanted the paycheck or whatever. And now she's just handling her obligations. or whatever and now she's just handling her obligations but in the interviews the things that she she they're like tell me about the movie and she's like well it's a movie she's like i have

to uh anyway so those are some people who got rejected apparently applicants have to go through like years and years and years and years of taxes and financial statements just to like even qualify to live here so now i know maury is a very upstanding financially savvy guy i guess got himself a good money manager i guess great for him um but apparently some people have been leaving in the last few years uh when then when they sold their apartments they said that they're noticing the building is no longer like focused towards creatives and it's more like they're just picking rich people which uh i don't know really how i feel about that it's just a fun fact for everybody else i guess um but i feel like i would also probably just if if my whole thing is rich

and famous people maybe the famous part is really inconvenient or like the creatives part is like maybe it is really loud i don't know so or maybe it's supposed to be like a safe haven where you know they can all live in apartments and not feel like they're being stared at. I don't know what the upside of either side is. That must have hurt Maury's feelings. He's like, I'm very creative. It's like, well, is that how I got in then? Hey.

Well, fun fact again. The Dakota is one of the most haunted buildings in New York or one of the most haunted apartment buildings in new york and it's even allegedly cursed and this theory is a little wild but not i feel like it still gets like at least like a little footnote it's a fun little mention that someone has the theory that because the in-house power plant has a lot of electrical energy plus all of the celebrities that live here their creative energy together go hand in hand fist bump and create powerful spiritual energy and that's why this place is really haunted like okay giving the celebs a little too much credit but you know maybe not or that power plant i don't know um or the power plant yeah so the

paranormal history goes back at least to the 1930s which would be only 50 years of the building being around it could be earlier but we at least know through the 1930s there were spirits here in the 1930s the ghost of edward clark the founder himself he appeared in the basement to multiple electricians who would go down there oh there's one report of an electrician showing up and in the basement running into a short but very long-nosed man short but long-nosed okay and he had a big beard. And apparently this guy approached him, glared really intensely at him, and then ripped his own toupee off and started shaking it around. Oh, dear. And apparently it happened, I think, like four times after that, like, like electricians just kept having this happen to them in the basement which like oh my god what does it mean like what does it mean what a cipher i'll like what the fuck that is one way to leave

a lasting impression as a ghost i would say i feel like i feel like um some of the the sites i was looking at their theory was like maybe he was just so mad at how a previous electrician did it that there's residual energy of a time where he got so mad he just started like rattling around. But like, why would you rip your own hair off and then shake it? I've tried to rip my own hair out of frustration. But yeah, I imagine someone with such decorum as this guy, as this very wealthy man with sterling floors, it really surprises me that that's kind of his lasting image. It honestly doesn't shock me that someone with sterling silver floors actually was a bit of a

loose screw. Like, that's okay. You know what? Fair point. A little too tightly wound. A little bit. So apparently they didn't know who this guy was until the electrician actually saw a painting of him and realized that it was the founder of the building and then they like covered up he like saw painting and then he like covered up the hair and was like yeah they had to repaint it on that is the right guy

now i recognize him there's a guy also uh that haunts his place named joe he thought that the dakota was haunted and when he died more activity than ever kicked up in this building doors would lock and unlock themselves open and close themselves the elevators would start and stop themselves and this was at a time when they were like manually operated elevators the trash bags would levitate which i didn't know you and i could levitate thank you for including yourself oh i'm sorry you and you also um yeah cheap shot but i had to do it good for us but yeah just a bunch of like little random stuff would happen people started noticing a darker spirit in the basement. And one employee apparently said that this big heavy shovel got thrown at him from across the room.

Oh. And people started smelling pipe smoke when nobody was around. People started seeing a little girl in the windows and small fires started mysteriously starting themselves. Okay. Well, they're testing out this mud theory. I know. You would think the one building that doesn't theory i know like you would think the the one building

that doesn't have fire escapes please don't be the one that also sets fires practice your pyromania here thank you yeah not the place please do it like down the road at the boat with a fire escape apparently put the the boat is in the water do it there uh one this one's i i only got this from one source but it was weird enough that it has to get mentioned. There's an elevator that apparently mysteriously gets knife cuts all through its interior. And it has to regularly be refinished because people just walk in and there's just small knife cuts all over the elevator. Ew, that's gross the spirit that does this to the elevator has been nicknamed the phantom of the dakota and the mad slasher but not the hash slinging slasher

i wow that the mad i mean that's alarming if you're in like a a beauty it sounds like an episode of only murders in the building like there's like a slasher in the beautiful apartment complex you know also like imagine okay if you work in hotels please don't you're you didn't hear this part but like one of my favorite things to do when we're traveling is like go exploring through the hotel at night and but imagine i mean that's just it's that's karma waiting to happen as you're just standing in an elevator that cuts itself. Like now I'm in trouble. Well, I don't want to be in that elevator by myself.

I would sure wouldn't either. And like, it's a knife there is the knife invisible. What if you're about to take your like lovely old sweet mother to dinner, you're riding the elevator and all of a sudden bam cut bam cut slash slash yeah that's when you take your enemy there and then you say oh i'll get the next one and you just leave them in that elevator you say okay hit the alarm hit the emergency stop button and then you go get her boys yeah just good luck um i mentioned the ghost of a little girl this little girl has apparently been seen quite a lot there's the ghost of a girl wearing a yellow dress bouncing a red ball they're always bouncing a damn ball god what is with the ball it feels like it was the halfway point between

our fun and hoop and stick it's like well there was a whole era of ghosts where they just had a ball and that was it's like man they didn't they didn't even know what they were missing i know and they didn't even have internet to look back and hear about hoop and stick they didn't even know what fun happened before them telling you just thought sad days this red ball is the most fun any of us have ever had oh Tragic. So she's bouncing this red ball. She's wearing a yellow dress. Sometimes she's seen crying. And one time a construction crew saw her.

And this is the only time that I saw recorded. But when the construction crew saw her, she stopped bouncing the ball. She turns and looks at them. And then she says, today is my birthday and then she leaves and you know it wasn't her birthday she just wanted some attention she just wanted to see if they give her a shiny nickel for the soda shop yeah she's like i need a new ball to play with yeah this one's losing its bounce you know how it goes um it's my birthday disappear that's kind of the funniest thing i've ever heard i like that she was a little manipulative know how it goes um it's my birthday disappear that's kind of the funniest

thing i've ever heard i like that she was a little manipulative i love it i love it so get this after the group saw her and she's the only one that's ever like turned to them acknowledged them said something then shortly after one of the guys the construction crew fell down one of the stairs and died oh shit and so this led people to think that she is like an omen and if she stops and talks to you you're fucked oh my god it's my birthday and i want to watch one of you fall like when now you die yeah so if you see her maybe don't give her too much attention or if you do just hope she doesn't say hi back. Just say happy birthday. I think that's all she wants. Oh, unless that means I'm asking for it.

Good point. I'll let you say happy birthday and then we'll see what happens. Okay. If we ever see her, we'll each react completely differently and see what happens. I will just watch you react and I will be around the corner. Okay. For science. Well, Eva, get in there. I'm excited because I'll also be at the coffee shop. But you tell us how it goes.

Oh, yeah. Sorry. Emma's with me around the corner. Eva's there talking to the ghost child. It's like at the Queen Mary when we were both behind the corridor while we watched her check us out early because we were too embarrassed. It's happened before it'll happen again and she knows it uh so this little girl when she's not apparently a harbinger for doom uh she is seen smiling and waving to people she's also seen walking into

rooms and sometimes even closets because I wonder if blueprint theory there used to be a room there oh I like that I like that a lot there's one couple here who I checked it is not who you think it is but their last name was Weinstein and they were rich and famous but it was not related right uh what's that probably related right I don't know all i know is it's not it's not he who shall not be named um but uh a weinstein couple lived uh at the dakota and they also said this place is totally haunted we hear footsteps in the apartment at night apparently their chairs and their like heavy rugs would move on their own yuck which like a rug is under other things so is everything moving yeah is it like they're just shifting it maybe they're trying to do that magic trick where you pull it um

pull a whatever tablecloth yeah yeah i hope so that'd be fun and do it when there's like a whole dinner party on top of the rug and just knock everyone out. Especially if you have some candelabras lit. This place is fireproof, remember? Wow, you're really, you could, I know that you have already done the writing prompt for that last story, but this could be something. Remember this for your next contest you enter. Eva, write that down, please. Thank you.

you enter eva write that down please thank you uh well it was already haunted but one day the husband was coming home and he looked up at the window to see what was going on in his apartment and he saw a whole ass chandelier hanging from his ceiling and he was like oh my wife must have bought a chandelier today and had it installed which to be that rich i can't even imagine oh she must have installed this had the new crystal swarovski i don't know yeah exactly fancy uh when he got upstairs though there was no chandelier but when he looked closer he looked at the ceiling and he saw that old bolts were installed in the ceiling where a chandelier once oh shit so he like saw a phantom chandelier that used to be there. It's kind of like those stories we've talked about where there's like a time warp or like you can see

into a different time period. A slip. A time slip. Time slip. I love a time slip. This is probably my favorite story I'll tell is that Boris Karloff who played Frankenstein he was I think the first actor to move into the Dakota and when he moved in it very much matched his creepy vibe of being Frankenstein and now being in this really creepy building but he this one I guess he reportedly once said that it made him sad that all the kids were scared of him because he's literally fucking Frankenstein. Oh, is he Frankenstein or Frankenstein's monster? I would argue both are scary. Frankenstein's monster. Oh,

I didn't know. I genuinely didn't know if that's who he played or if he played like the doctor Frankenstein. I know, I know, but it's the, it's the one that the children would be scared of. Well,

that's fine. Cause now we'll get, we won't get the tweets, you know? So, well, he, apparently he once said that like it always made him sad that like on halloween he would leave out like a bowl of candy and nobody would ever come which like can you imagine you literally live next to frankenstein and it's halloween that's yeah come on exactly where you

go for your damn blessings children exactly where you go i can't imagine like devin saw a ghost casper like or uh uh what's his name bell lagosi vampire like now that would be creepy like any or like a witch who has ever like a witch bet middler bet middler anyone from halloween town i feel like if you are living amongst if you live next to one of the the charmed sisters and you don't go to their house first and last and the it's the only one in the middle if you don't go there for your candy on halloween you're doing it wrong you're doing it so wrong also how many kids are in this building like two i feel like this sounds like a place where kids are frowned upon. I feel like in the middle of all your financial statement meetings, they're like, do you have those?

That's got to be. That's probably a big red flag if you're applying to this place, I would argue. I think it depends on the age. How troublesome are they going to be to the rest of us? But then again, the whole place is soundproofed. Have they learned to polish silver flooring? Because if they're able to contribute in that way, maybe they're welcome. You know, I never saw a little kid in a single episode of Gossip Girl.

Everyone was at least 14. Great point. So maybe you have to be a high schooler. No toddlers. So anyway, Frankenstein just really of the kids to like him which again this this is another writing prompt for a writing contest is like frankenstein the monster just actually wants love um oh i mean i think that is the entire story of frankenstein's monster is it that he wants love well Dr. Frankenstein wants a person yes but then it's that the monster is I actually really like that book it was like one of the few that I

actually read in high school and it's really sad he like tries to find uh belonging but the the villagers are like no so it does feel like he's almost mirroring like interesting his actual character well apparently one of the kids who did used to go trick-or-treating there remembers a ghost story after boris karloff died where she was going trick-or-treating with her friends and uh she remembers going through the halls of their friends and feeling politely followed and a few times even looked behind her and saw a very tall man just kind of watching them from behind. And when they got to an elevator, the man who had been following them in a way that didn't make her feel weird, I guess, but like was just like kind of keeping an eye on them. on them the they got to the elevator that same man got on with them but all of them like didn't want to look him in the face because they didn't want to like stare or anything they just yeah

knew that he was there when they when the kids got off at their stop on the elevator they got off to let the man out too and he vanished do they think it was him boris i think they they claim it was boris karloff checking on them and spending time with the kids on halloween he wants to have friends that's all frankenstein turning into a ghost is the only frankenstein plot twist i don't think i've heard of so another ghost that people see in the dakota is a woman in white of fucking course but she's carrying a rose and she said oh god that's sinister yeah isn't it it's like something i don't know why it's that one subtle change um she's said to be the mistress of a married man who lived in the building and when he wouldn't end his marriage for her she took her own life and when she died apparently in that exact same moment

she died her ghost appeared in front of the husband and his wife um oh well that's she's got the last word yep well so freaked out the husband then runs to her place to to be like what did i just see finds her body and she's holding a rose oh yuck and you know that was probably some symbolic thing between them you know well now it's said that only unfaithful men and their wives can see her so if you're at the dakota and you are a woman or a man if you're married to someone and you're not cheating and you see her they're cheating oh she is just wreaking havoc and i love that for her gemini i already know indeed no she's like by the way i'm stuck here for eternity i'm gonna stir the fucking pot why not you know something to

watch i would be like oh and another thing well i would too especially if it's in the name of like you know protecting relationships although i guess she's the one who was also cheap well no she the husband was cheating with her right and so then so now she goes around and tells on people okay gotcha i i wonder if it's because he wouldn't end the marriage and she got bamboozled she's serving as a warning for other women it's like girl if you see me run and not because run but because your husband is trash don't run yet let me explain um another notable resident here was judy holiday who was an oscar tony and golden globe winner she lived here with a name like judy holiday she better be right i feel like some people are just born for the stage name right

judy holiday what a name i like to think i'd be like what's my stage name but i don't know i guess it's m schultz i guess it's the m schultz okay wait wait guess what judy holiday's real birth name is what i i it could be anything stella judith judith to them yeah it had to be changed yeah it had to be changed but which is it's really uh she was born judith to them she took her stage name from yom tovim which is hebrew for holidays interesting so holiday that's really actually a cool little twist uh well she lived there in the 60s and when she died the new tenants of her place hired a crew for renovations and if there's one thing we've learned in almost 400 episodes you renovations bring the ghosts out for sure for sure the crew saw an apparition of a man body and a boy's face on the man body

so a grown-ass man with a maybe he just had like a little like baby face i don't know but apparently frankenstein's monster 2.0 yeah frankenstein is at it again with his hijinks he loves a hijink he love it loves it well they see this guy and he never says anything to them but they felt very closely watched for the rest of the day. And the boy has been seen other times walking up and down the halls and apparently always has a strange musty smell coming from him. I don't like it. Me either. And there's no explanation.

So I don't even feel better about that. No, I don't feel better either. So wait, so it's a man's body with a boy's face on it and he smells musty smells musty and just doesn't speak just walks around sounds like a goosebumps book it does doesn't it yeah so one of the painters actually had to go back to the Dakota at some point and do a touch up. And I guess he was one of the people who saw this man boy. And he witnessed doors slamming by themselves, lights turning off on their own. And then he felt someone grab his arm and drag him towards the light bulbs he was working near.

Oh, no. Oh, no. And you can believe it. He didn't come back. I't oh i i wouldn't either certainly the second you're grabbed never again no no no don't touch me you know i was willing to tolerate a lot of bullshit until someone physically touched me now now we're done we're done here um today leona said something so funny i don't know maybe it wasn't that funny but to me it was very funny because she's never seen frozen like i've not for lack of trying i've like tried to show her a few

things but she's like daniel tiger only you know or coco melon lane only a loyalist a loyalist indeed and which i get you know you're you're the same way you only watch degrassi or something so i get it but i uh today she asked me to draw a snowman and so i was like do you want to build a snowman and she goes anna stop and i said what first of all i thought she was saying mom stop but then she's like anna stop and she threw her arm out and i was like where the fuck did you pick that up how did she learn that so it turns out her teacher when they're when they're doing like potty time will sometimes play something on her phone to like make sure the kids i don't know stay put or something she goes miss abby showed me and i was like oh thank god okay i was really

nervous for a minute when she said did you did you just channel Idina Menzel? Are you my Broadway muse? Like what happened? It was hilarious. And then I said, Blaze, watch this. And I was like, do you want to build a snowman? And she just like whipped around and said, Anna, stop. And Blaze was like, what in the world?

Well, no wonder she doesn't want to watch it. Like it feels like school probably. Oh, maybe. I mean, she loves school though. So maybe we should lean into that. But anyway, so Anna, stop. You know, that feels like you're going to accidentally, like Pavlovian-ly trigger her that every time she goes potty, she's going to go, Anna, stop. But like, even as an adult, like, she's just going to be on the potty. Oh, I was like, what does a potty have to do with it? Oh, because of it. Yeah, yeah.

Listen, this teacher is setting this up not me don't blame me i'm not i'm not blaming anyone i'm just saying that she's gonna have an initial thought all the time when she goes like i sort of feel like that was bound to happen so yeah i guess of all things it's not that bad but that it could be worse that has to be so scary as a parent just like every time your kid opens their mouth and says something new, you're like, where the fuck did you get that from? You're like, well, seriously, how am I supposed to keep up? And then Blaze and I have to update each other because we're like, oh, if she says this, I finally figured out it means this.

You know what I mean? Like, don't worry. She's not summoning a spirit. She's referencing some episode, you know. Anyway, you never know it's it's all uh it's all very chaotic so good to know i feel like now even when i'm on the potty i'm gonna go on a stop on a stop i don't even know if that's how this song go or how they whatever it's it made me laugh anyway it. It's very precious.

I'm sorry. I don't know. I don't know how we got there because the last thing I said was someone grabbed a man and like dragged him to the light bulbs. You said, oh, he never came back. I don't know. I have no idea. I'm so sorry. Your brain is also fascinating, Christine.

That we should study. Is it? I don't think so. I think that's a dangerous game. So anyway, all that happened, like all the construction crew was dealing with stuff because they did renovations in Judy Holiday's apartment after she died. Her death in the Dakota is part of an ongoing theory that this entire building has a curse. Because many people who've walked through this building have either died very early or had some other horrible demise. From the very beginning, the first person in this building was Edward Clark. And he didn't live long enough to even see the building get finished.

Judy Holliday. She, she died early at 43. Marilyn Monroe, who got like rejected from living here, still had friends there and would visit often. And she did a photo shoot. She's like, I would have done something nicer with that mantelpiece,

but whatever. I already know what I would have done. Yeah. She apparently did a photo shoot at Judy Holliday's apartment. so she's been in the building and she died at 36 um judy garland uh dorothy yeah lived there and she died at 47 john lennon lived there he died at 40 oh he lived there too that's right i did hear wow okay this creepy. I mean, how old was he when he died? Sorry. 40. You just said it. So I don't like that it's in the 40s. That feels like when you're kind of like safe, right?

Like, I mean, not safe, but it's like it should be a very healthy decade where you're an adult and you're figured shit out. And then all of a sudden, bam, it's yeah it's oh i feel like if you make it to 50 and you live there you're like oh thank god i'm like oh phew i dodged a bullet yeah um also just to add to all the people who died really early there after the exterior shots of rosemary's baby was filmed there the composer died from a head injury the producer had kidney stones so bad that they gave him uh pain that led to delusions and he started shouting pain that he had so much pain from he had a bout of kidney stones that was so painful he ended up being delusional in the hospital later where he started shouting in the hospital rosemary dropped the knife ew he just kept shouting that

yeah then uh rosemary's baby was directed by roman polanski and a year after the movie came out his wife sharon tate was one of the murder victims of the manson family. Oh boy. Oh boy. So it's just, it feels a little dark, but also you could probably chalk it up. Well, not really though, but I could see someone trying to make the argument of like, oh, well the lifestyles of the rich and the famous,

maybe they, maybe they're all a little wild and they have a higher risk for early death. I don't know. I feel like you could probably come up with some sort of argument but it's still weird it's still very weird i mean i guess when it comes to drugs and stuff but i feel like the the deaths that aren't drug related are still are are especially odd yeah but also a lot of people moved in there and like i think boris karloff died in the Dakota.

I think maybe there was also a lot of death. So it led to a lot of ghosts and maybe the ghosts bring the bad energy. And then the bad energy. Combined with that big nuclear power plant in the basement or whatever. And all the celebrities, creative spaces. That's right. Maury and all his, on all his ease, many easels and watercolors. I imagine this place is just.

You know what? Maury's like a hundred years old years old, and is he still kicking? Well, you know what? If he's not, then we've got some apologizing to do for the way we've kind of just thrown his name around. Yeah, he's 85. Wow, I actually did not know. Oh, he's married to Connie Chung.

That's why they both live there. Okay, that makes sense. I forgot about that part of him i you know i get him and jerry springer confused which i know is blasphemous as a cincinnatian but maury was always the one i watched actually me too of all of them it's steve wilkos steve you were steve steve wilkos i was definitely maury. Maury and Steve, but Jerry I never cared for. Well, RIP. May he rest in peace.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You want to keep going? Well, okay. You want to say some shit about Regis Philbin this time? No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

As I just mentioned briefly, the most famous spirit at this location is John Lennon, who lived here for five years with Yoko Ono, who was 91. I just looked up to see if she was still alive. She's 91. Mm-hmm. Old elderly. Good for her. I'm sorry. I'm just saying, like, I feel like now we've talked about so many people who are 40 and died, and I'm like, 90?

Yes. Fuck yeah. Like, live that senior life. Go. She made it um so in 1975 john lennon and yoko ono bought five apartments in this building oh shit uh they bought two on the seventh floor that i guess they built into one i'm guessing into one apartment so they had like 40 rooms and then they bought three more for storage for work and for entertaining guests and apparently this caused like a huge kerfuffle i bet it's like we only have 65

apartments now you've just bought they're like marilyn monroe's not allowed to live here but i guess you can store your shit in this apartment right yeah exactly i mean i guess when you're a beetle you can do anything but how did i mean a beetle do that? But Marilyn Monroe couldn't, I don't know. Um, yeah. Anyway, but so they ended up buying this out, buying out a bunch of apartments. I think after them, a rule got created that you could only buy one at a time. So when they first moved in, the people who owned the apartment before them was Robert Ryan and his wife, Jessie, who died in the apartment. And her spirit is said to have haunted the Lennons. Eventually, it got so wild that they called a psychic in to do a seance.

And the ghost, Jessie Ryan, came through and told the lenins she was leaving but she or she would not leave sorry the opposite she said what did you just say i'm not leaving but don't worry i won't bother you but i am gonna stick around which okay i feel like you're bothering me by sticking around exactly and i also feel like couldn't you have just said okay bye i'm leaving and like not actually left and just pretended i don't know couldn't you read the room that you're clearly not wanted here we've hired a outside help to come in and talk to you about this but love that you feel safe here that's excellent and so perfect I'm so happy for you. But it is not going to work for me. Not today.

John Lennon was apparently, because he was like open spiritually to all this stuff, he had no problem coexisting with the spirit. Okay. Also, I feel like you'd have to be kind of open to coexisting with a spirit if they just told you to their face that she's not leaving. I mean, literally, if they say I'm moving in and I, you can't get rid of me. Yeah. I guess. And you just spent probably a hundred million dollars here on five apartments.

So we're both stuck. Yeah. Fun fact about John Lennon living here. He claimed to see a UFO from one of the windows. Oh my God. Another fun fact is that apparently $30 thousand dollars is rumored to be buried under the floor of their apartment but the board refuses to destroy the floor to find out the floor because it's original flooring okay you said the board never mind yeah i know i heard it

okay it's not funny i thought it was funny in my head it wasn't really but um do you i mean i wonder how that rumor started like did somebody say they witnessed this happen i don't know i don't even know if i think john lennon even made it up because it sounds like it was from the previous residence oh so oh maybe that's why that ghost was fucking sticking around just like my last story where it's like well there's I'm attached to something under the floorboards. It's always under the floorboards. Always. But anyway, we'll never know.

I guess not for now, at least. Another fun fact is that John Lennon, not only was he being haunted by that woman, but he used to see another ghost all the time that he called the crying lady who was a woman with curly hair and she would walk down the halls of the apartment building just crying and she wore uh outdated clothes that suggested she was from the late 1800s early 1900s one source says this might have been a beautiful wealthy tenant and her she got depressed and threw herself out of the window that's one of the stories the other story is that she might be uh elise vestley who was one of the earlier property managers and apparently her son died nearby when she was still alive and she never recovered so they think maybe that's why she's crying oh um besides john lennon other

people have also claimed to see her wandering the halls wearing an old gray gown she cries she quickly vanishes and there was one article i read where a reporter actually got invited to a party at the dakotas and like said in advance like i'm gonna see this fucking crying lady i want to see this crying lady so apparently the reporter is hanging out in this at this party hears someone crying and looks around and nobody else is reacting looks at the corner of the room and sees a woman sobbing in a dress and you could see right through her but she still seemed real enough that it was weird to the reporter that nobody else was looking at her or noticing her creepy and the woman walked out into the hall and the reporter followed the woman being like i'm

gonna see how this goes runs out into the hall sees nobody but still hears a faint crying from down the hall so the reporter runs down the halls like i'm gonna follow you i'm gonna find you follows the sound of the crying down the hall and ends up at a dead end with an open window and the reporter sensed an intense sorrow and just knew in their gut that this was the window that she leapt from oh my god that is quite a story last fun fact i have for you about john lennon's time there is that while living in the dakota there's an interview that i just watched on youtube where he reads a fan letter he's in the dakota i'm pretty sure he's like lying in bed with yoko ono in a bed and doing this interview and reading a fan letter in his own home love love that for

him uh-huh love that for him in the fan letter he the fan letter says i was using a ouija board and it predicted that you will be that an assassination attempt will will be made on you oh geez well is there a clip clip of that somewhere yeah it's like nine seconds long it's if you look up John Lennon fan letter predicts death. Oh, that's so eerie. Okay. I didn't know about that. I like when you cover your ears and you get nervous.

I do. I don't know why I do that. It makes everything louder in my ears and your story. So it's like not helping me. I don't know why I do it. Well, so the eeriest part of it all is that he's reading that letter, saying out loud a prediction of his death in the Dakota. And in 1980, at the Dakota, Mark David Chapman, who is mad at John Lennon because he said that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus.

In my world, they were. So he was kind of right um john lennon was the victim of mark david chapman's assassination attempts which by the way it was inspired by the book catcher in the rye he was carrying that book on him fun fact and so uh fucking loser he guess, hung around the Dakota waiting for John Lennon to leave the building. When he first saw John Lennon that day, he got him to sign one of his records, which is so eerie. Yeah, they had an interaction. Yeah. And then let him go.

Was like, oh, can you sign my record? And then John Lennon left to go to a recording session. And when he came back that night, Chapman shot him five times, four hit him in the back. And this is a quote, Chapman remained at the scene, reading the catcher on the ride until he was arrested. Yeah.

He literally sat on the curb and was like, anyway, chapter seven. How, how it's like nothing more premeditated than like, oh, before I kill him, I should get him to sign one last thing that I can have for the rest of time. Like, you know, you're going to jail.

So like, why do you have to even get that thing signed unless you want like a memento of the day? Yeah. Yeah. God, who knows? I mean, clearly he was not, you know, in his right mind. So it's it's just sad. And like, yeah, I remember recently hearing like the full story of his assassination. It was probably in that same episode, to be honest, whatever that was.

It might have been lore. But is it true? I heard that Yoko Ono had like a she was like playing the piano or something. Oh, yeah. I have that here. Oh, you do that oh you do okay sorry oh when he was being shot or i could be wrong i don't know oh i feel like i'm misremembering i thought she had kind of a psychic vision when he was killed oh i don't know about that maybe i have half the information and you have half the information Oh that would be a fun little puzzle What I have is that Ever since he died at the Dakota or I saw one Source that said he died at the hospital

Or he was dead on arrival but most People say that he died on the steps of the Dakota Right So I mean he got shot four times Pretty point blank I'm pretty sure he like tried get to the stairs, too. Yeah, he took a few steps and collapsed. Oh, boy.

And I think Yoko Ono was with him because she left and came back from the recording session with him. That's true. Yeah, I do believe she was with him. I think there's some story I read where either she had a vision or there was some bizarre occurrence that happened i don't know with her and him when he passed like a or maybe maybe his ghost came to her or something like that i feel like maybe that was it so what i have is that ever since he died now people will see his ghost outside by the archway where he was shot sometimes they see an eerie glow by the building sometimes they see like a body of energy where he died people have seen

his apparition walking by they seen it staring out uh out of the windows someone says that they saw him flashing the peace sign someone says that uh they saw him walking from the dakota to central park and then one me up so oh sorry no go ahead go ahead i was just gonna say that would trip me up so bad because you you'd be like i just saw john lennon but then you're like what if someone was just prank like what if someone's wandering around dressed as john lennon and like well that's what i so the next thing i was gonna say is that one hot dog vendor he swears that he heard the ghost singing give peace a chance you don't think people go to that site every day and fucking play his song on the phone?

I feel like I would doubt myself if I actually saw John Lennon. I'd be like, that's just an impersonator. Yeah, it's someone dressing the part or something. What I think you're talking about is that even in the Dakota, people have seen his ghost in the apartment building including yoko ono who said that she saw john lennon's ghost in their apartment playing their piano and he looked at her and said don't be afraid i'm still with you and uh a lot of sites were saying like since yoko ono saw him we have to trust that it's real and i'm like i would argue that like the spouse the bereaved spouse is or the grieving spouse is probably the last one we should probably trust right off the bat but everyone thought like

because yoko ono saw him it's got to be real. And I'm like, okay. But also, like, if someone I love died, I would be playing tricks with my head nonstop. I mean, it could be real, but... I mean, yeah, it's an odd argument to be like, well, she couldn't be wrong about that. Yeah, it's like, just because she was the closest to him, but it's like, I would argue that because she's the closest to him, her brain is, like, telling her a million different ways

that he's still in the house. Right, right, right. It could be just a trick of the mind. Yeah. But apparently because she saw him, everyone's like, every other ghost story must be true. For what it's worth, I believe that she saw him. But, you know. And I believe that the hot dog vendor heard him sing.

You know what? Me too. Fucking justice for that hot dog vendor. Why don't they say, forget Yoko Ono. If that hot dog vendor why don't they say forget forget yoko oh no if that hot dog vendor saw then we know it's true that's what i always say um i have one last thing to add to my notes and then it will be your turn but i it was too good to not tell um there was a source that i found that said the original owner of the dakota edward clark who mr toupee man yeah oh i won't soon forget well since the building was made in the 1880s it was kind of around uh the spiritualism

time and apparently edward clark liked to hold seances no on his fucking silver floors on his silver floor imagine that that. That's so creepy. It probably like holds all the energy in it. There's got to be something metaphysical with that. I don't know what it is. Wait a minute. I think you're right. Maybe it is.

Maybe it's like silver vampires. I don't know. Just a thought. It is interesting that it's called the Dracula and it has silver. Wait, isn't silver werewolves? Hmm. No, silver cross oh i was thinking silver bullet silver is apparently and silver bolts in frankenstein's neck maybe that's what they were trying to trying to do is like prevent i don't know ethereal beings from entering

the space while he did his say like bad ones you know while he did his seance if you're a witch um in 2024 can you please tell me what silver floors must be doing because it's got to do something um they must be doing something well so i wanted to say edward clark likes to hold seances here and i don't know if they did this in the spirit of that or they just happen it happens to be a fun fact that that works here. But. There was a composer who used to live here named Leonard Bernstein. He had a three bedroom apartment that eventually sold to a family called the Milsteins for twenty and a half million dollars.

By the way, you're doing it wrong. Rich people like at some point you're so rich way you're doing it wrong rich people like at some point you're so rich things you start doing like not rich things like you just like lose your yeah you're spending over 20 million dollars on a three-bedroom apartment you're fucking wrong that's not how it works sorry um but anyway so leonard bernstein lived there. The Milsteins bought it. And this is a headline from New York Times called Young Socialites Conjure the Ghost of Leonard Bernstein at the Dakota. And apparently these like millennial or Gen Z rich kids. Wait, this is recent? I think it's pretty recent. Let me see what year it was. I think it was pretty recent. Let me see what year it was.

I think it was pretty recent. It was giving Gossip Girl. So, 2017. So, six years ago? Seven years ago? Damn. For some reason, when you first said it, I thought it was, like, from the 1940s. Like, young socialites.

Oh, that'd be fun. Have a little seance. That'd be fun. This is like a but that'd be fun this is like a tiktok era thing well not quite this is like almost a tiktok era thing if it was seven years ago then they're millennials they're our age they're yeah so it would be like an instagram thing an instagram thing but it's interesting so i guess when the millsteins bought it out from the bernsteins the millstein millennial kids who lived in that house were like well he lived there he lived here before us kids in this place they're

just fucking having bringing back the dead and trick-or-treating i don't know if they knew about edward clark also holding seances here and so they're like well if the original founder of this place did it he would be okay with us doing it or if it was just a separate thing of like oh wouldn't it be fun if we like used or we did board and conjured our the previous tenant i mean we've done it but anyway so so the new york times fashion section wrote a piece on this and it really is the most gossip girl thing i've ever heard in my life because since it's the new york times fashion section and they're talking about the up-and-coming social elite it's almost like the spooky part of this doesn't even fucking count um wow so here's here's

clips from the article so this is um is the Milstein kids who did this. Their names are Larry and Toby. They're now probably 29 and 31. So they're our age. Wow. And the Milsteins are a family that's estimated back in 2015, they were estimated to be worth like $3 billion. Cool, cool, cool. So just to give you an idea of where these people are.

three billion dollars cool cool so just to give you an idea of where these people are and they i guess wanted to host a seance in their parents room and the new york times went we're gonna write about it so uh so they attended basically like the reporter attended this the reporter i think yes the reporter attended oh i thought it was just like a really casual like let's get out of ouija board but it was like oh no this is a soiree and we're wearing our finery okay estimated three billion dollars i don't think they're in their Walmart sweatpants doing a Ouija board no they're okay fair I I guess I just didn't know it was a premeditated Ouija board I thought maybe like oh we found mama's uh tortoise shell galapagonian tortoise shell Ouija board we should play no they like planned this out in advance um

let me just read this quote young socialites conjure the ghost of leonard bernstein at the dakota this is a series of quotes that i've jumbled into one for all from the same piece miss milstein for the seance wore a pink and gray striped halter dress and embroidered lace-up sandal booties, both by Fendi. Mr. Milstein, who graduated from Yale in May, paired a green Fendi blazer with a club Monaco top, rag and bone trousers, and Gucci furline leather slippers

personalized with tiger apliques. The family fortune can be traced to morris milstein who founded the circle floor company in 1919 family family lore has it that he ran multiple businesses with different names using a single set of stationary printed office of the undersigned which are you fucking kidding me that's so badass that is badass i'm loving this to set the seance mood i can you imagine okay okay i'm just gonna read it to set the seance how much were the candles like it was like one candle like to set the seance mood a grapefruit and cucumber taco candle taco toca i don't even i'm not that rich i don't know uh candles scented the air. Well, while we're correcting, uh, applique, I think is what you meant to say.

Applique. Okay, cool. See, I, I am not worth $3 billion. Um, okay. Don't be so hard on yourself. No, no, no, no. Not you, my dear Em. Uh, to, I'm the person who has Walmart sweatpants and has a dirty Ouija board. That's what I've got. Well, you have the one I drew for you on the back of a poster with a Shelby, so I don't know. To set the seance mood, a grapefruit and cucumber candle scented the air as a candelabrum flickered dramatically on the piano. Crystal ice buckets chilled mini champagne splits alongside a bottle of Jack Daniels and an arrangement of pastel macarons.

Shut the fuck up. The mood was simultaneously somber and expectantly gay, like that of a family dressed for the reading of a will in which they're expecting good news. You can understand why I would have thought this was in like the 1960s or something, right? And also a satire. Yes. And also also satirical it really does feel outrageous wait for this they assembled around the piano as if it were a coffin and Mr. Milstein distributed pages printed with the lyrics of songs associated with the Dakota's departed talents the group touched glasses and accompanied by mr pegler on piano began a medley that included mr bernstein's maria from west side story imagined by john lennon and playing along with the evening's theme taylor swift's i don't want to live forever recently popularized by zane

malik in execution it was more Beyonce than Seance. Wow, good one. For 20 minutes, the only spirits present appeared to be the Jack Daniels. But as the Steinway tinkled and voices filled the room, vibrations rose from deep beneath the earth like a musical giant shifting in its grave. Or perhaps it was just the A-Train. Are you kidding me? Anyway, that's the dakota whoever that is i hope they run vogue now that i mean i can't it literally feels like something serena vanderwoodson and blair waldorf would have like written up on gossip girl it's honestly one of the funniest things i've ever heard and i feel like um this is a sign

first of all it also sounds like something i've been watching re-watching schitt's creek which you can probably tell in some of the things i've said today but uh it just gives such like schitt's creek vibes like so yes very more rose right like it's just like what are you even doing but i kind of love it but also it makes me first of all, are the Richies coming for our spooky stuff? Like, go away. Second of all, are seances in again? I think so. I mean, this was clearly what did you say? Seven fucking years ago. Wow. OK. Seven years ago. But like maybe there's a sign here that the like the elite are bringing back seances like

how the back in the spiritualism days, you know, like maybe. Yeah, but you know what? You know, in all that writing, not a single fucking note on what happened at the seance except what the candles look like. So I feel like they. And also, by the way. Well, they're doing it wrong because i feel like anyone i don't even know witchcraft well enough to tell you what they should have done but i know well enough to know that the cucumber grapefruit candle is not the candle you light for us heyons

okay but however i will argue with that because i've read in my witchy books that it does not matter what type of candle because you don't want to get hung up in the details i mean they are hung up in the details so there is that but you know it's all about the intention so it could be what was their intention i don't think a seance was it at the end of the day i think it was to get a fendi feature it sounds almost like a promo for like fendi if fendi ever needed a promo. I don't know. It's very weirdly like it feels sponsored. It feels like SpawnCon. And then all of a sudden I fall into like what are the politics of like rich people in the newspaper?

Because like if you reached out to Fendi and said my family's worth $3 billion. They're going to do a piece on us in the fashion section. If you send me something from Fendi, I will make sure it's mentioned in the. Or if you pay me like from Fendi I will make sure it's mentioned in the or you know that all of a sudden it all feels like 10 million dollars I'll wear this Fendi dress yeah and they'll make a sentence they'll say a sentence about it I'm sure there's so this is why I love shows like Succession because it's like I don't even know if it's real or what but just watching people with that amount of money it's like aliens yeah yeah i wouldn't know what to do with it i would like were you just wearing walmart sweatpants before fendi sent you

a blazer to wear for the the piece were you wearing them ironically because that's kind of fucked up you know it's like anyway uh i thought that was just about the best seance i never want to go to and because they were taking one look at me i've been like out you go bye but apparently people like that are having seances so you're right i think people like us i feel like they would have looked at us and been like ghosts yeah you know they've been like demonic entities get the poor like something like dirty go back to the boat go back to your boat go back to the dakota boat okay so anyway that is the dakota um that was a really good one i really enjoyed that story thank you for sharing it felt

like it had a million stories within a story you know sure did a lot of fun facts i love a fun fact um i think you did an excellent job uh also i meant to mention this earlier but like what is it with people saying i am going to this place and i'm going to see a goat this specific ghost and then it happens couldn't be me i've tried should we try should we test it i'm nervous did i i did mention on the show the the little when i asked for an heirloom yes yes we talked about it yes on the show okay yeah that was the first time that i think i had been i actually got an answer. Manifested sort of like. Someone said, you just have to ask for it really specifically and it will happen. And I was like, that has literally never happened for me. And it's the only time it's worked. So. I feel like it's very the secret, you know.

But I do believe we kind of create our own reality. So in a way I'm like i mean i guess if you try hard enough so kylie jenner there was a i don't remember which year it was but i think it was 2020 2019 no maybe someone else but kylie jenner at the turn of a new year she was reported she was uh saying, this is going to be the year of knowing things and realizing things. This is the year of realizing things. And maybe this is the year of asking things. Like just saying, I'm asking for it. And if you don't deliver, there is not much I can do. But I'm asking.

I love that energy. Let's ask for things. And if they don't, what's the worst that happens? They don't come to us, you know? Yeah. And then after asking for things, maybe it is also another year of realizing things after we've asked for it. I feel like we've realized enough and I'm kind of over it.

That's what a lot of people were saying like through covid and trump and everything people would take that meme of kylie and they were like i'm done realizing i'm done realizing yeah i don't want to realize anymore a modern day prophet okay well tell chris jenner i'm sure she will use that in some oh i'm sure she's already created like i don't know a trademark that so I can't say it anymore. Okay. Let's get to my story, shall we? This is the story of the murder of Mia Zapata. Okay. Obligatory pause to see if you know it.

Always. I think out of however many episodes we've done, maybe 10. I've had a reaction. But those 10, it's a fun time. was those are special they are very significant yeah yeah yeah okay so um just as a heads up uh there are a number of sources here but uh one that i found particularly helpful was an episode of a show called dead of night which is like a you know classic discovery plus situation um and the episode is called sound of silence and i watched it on amazon prime cool so it was cool thank you mia was born in chicago in august of 1965 to parents richard and donna zapata and when she was a young child her family moved to louisville

kentucky where she grew up in a suburb, attended a college prep high school. Her parents, though, worked in the media and they made quite a bit of money. And so Mia lived a pretty comfortable life, like I want to say like traditional Midwest vibes, but also her parents had quite a bit of money. So, you know, she she had a what was described as a smart, polished and sophisticated family. Okay. Keep that in mind. Dakota quality. Dakota quality in Louisville, Kentucky.

You know what I mean? Fun mix. Yeah. So Mia and her friends, however, were described as sophisticated in a less traditional sense, which also sounds like the meanest thing you could say in like 1895 or something. Dakota boat quality. Precisely. So basically what that meant is that Mia was creative, intelligent, musically gifted, like, you know, a little weird, a little different, like colored her hair, you know, so had polish and sophistication and money, but was a little

bit different than her kind of traditional parents and siblings. So because of her musical abilities, she ended up going to school at Antioch College, which is up here in Ohio, Yellow Springs, Ohio, very small liberal arts school, shout out. And while there, she formed a band, and this would have been 1986. So her bandmates were Joe Spleen, Steve Moriarty, and Matt Dresner. Joe Spleen was meant to be in a fucking band. Joe Spleen sounds like the fakest name from a sitcom. Joe Spleen sounds like the fakest name from a sitcom. Joe Spleen sounds like there was a band called Jackal that my dad really liked.

And they had a song called The Lumberjack. And at the whole song, instead of like a guitar, someone just revving a chainsaw. And that feels like something Joe Spleen does. That is Joe Spleen level. Yeah, absolutely. it does in the garage like yeah for sure uh he's like how about this guys he revs the lawnmower and they're like not quite the same i call this one the lumberjack like spleen we what did we tell you it's like you know they call them spleenie i was gonna say you knew they call him spleen like there's no way they called him joe okay that but joe spleen like on a poster is like that's killer that's the most like like who's the guy with the jean jacket from stranger things like the the rocker you know he's

obsessed with joe spleen it's got yeah the joe spleen um the what do you call it when you do, when you hand stamp like a. Art. Turkey? It's like Thanksgiving turkey. It's just a turkey that says Joe Spleen. It's just his preschool artwork that they sent home. Can you imagine if we had a band poster, like a metal band, it's just a little turkey handprint. And it says Joe realize xenon is also just like a hand turkey but just green right like you realize she's just

a turkey at the end of the day aren't we all she is she is a big old turkey anyway i don't remember what we were talking about so let's get back to this uh okay the band uh so the band. She has Joe Spleen, et cetera, et al. So Matt first heard Mia sing at a college open mic night and he said, I was transfixed and overcome. I cried. Like that's how much her voice resonated with him. He cried. it was raw honest to the bone and from the heart so you're gonna really love this this is the name of the band and it sounds like something you call me as like a fun little pet name okay they called themselves sniveling little rat-faced gits now this is full credit a montyty Python reference, but still very funny. Okay. So it was rat. What was it? Sniveling little rat faced gits. Yeah, that sounds right.

So yeah, it sounds great. And I love it even more. So I think I already said this, but it is a Monty Python reference. But i think i love it even more because ultimately the band name officially became the gits not the sniveling rats but yeah i understand the gits the gits does sound cooler but but i like the gits because you're like you don't really know what it is and then when you find the backstory it's like a really fun little you know yeah that's more what is a git uh I assume it's just like a little a brat. I don't know. Like a git out of here. Maybe that's kind of when I first heard the gits. An unpleasant or contemptible person.

Here it is. M is a mean old git. There you go. I'm so glad. Thank you. So they shortened it to the gits, which I love. And Mia, like I said, was a very musical person. She'd grown up deeply passionate about music, learning to play guitar, piano at a very early age.

She and her siblings would sing together. And she kept journals where she would write down thoughts, lyrics, poetry. She was especially inspired by blues, jazz, and R&B. And she found influence and work by singers like Billie Holiday, Bessie Smith, you know very old school traditional artists but meanwhile the Gits were a punk rock band and they were trying to get in on this 80s 90s grunge scene that was so big. So Joe played the drums, Andrew was on guitar, Matt played bass and Mia was the obviously singer and lyricist and she drew on some of her earliest inspirations for their songs they had a sort of bluesy tone which was like an

homage to her her interest in the blues um and it was also a new twist on punk rock like punk rock usually didn't have kind of a traditional blues you know uh bent to it did you ever listen to like those um uh i think they were like charity albums uh called like punk goes crunk and no oh my god punk goes crunk was crazy there was uh it was like a bunch of like warp tour bands at the time they would all get together and like do a song but it was like they bunch of like warp tour bands at the time. They would all get together and like do a song, but it was like, they would do a cover of a different genre. Oh, I love that.

The one I listened to was Punk Goes Crunk, but I think there was like Pop Goes Rock or Rock Goes Pop. But it was always like a genre shift. I love that. The CD would, they'd get like the top 20 warp tour artists to cover a different song and the whole cd the proceeds went to something so i yesterday saw tiktok where a person was singing the most beautiful acoustic cover of lil wayne and i was

like this is like this is what i'm talking about i this energy, this creative mishmash swapping the genres. You know? I love it. I love it. There's one I still listen to that it was by, do you remember The Mane? Mm-hmm. Of course. It's like a band.

They did, oh, I Wanna Love You. Oh, God. And they did a, it was Punk Goes Crunk. But The Mane, I Wanna Love you is still something i listen to all the time yeah oh see now yeah i thought you meant it was the name of a main song and i was like i don't know the names of the songs oh no the main did i want to love you by akon and it's that until this day it's perfect one of my top listen to songs oh i'm gonna pull that i'm gonna listen to that later too i love that i love it oh acon so blues something goes blues goes rock is what this is right right punk

goes kerplunk i don't know i'm i'm not i'm not clearly i'm new to this whole thing okay um so basically they had this bluesy tone. And so I tell you that to say their punk rock, even though there were so many of these 80s and 90s kind of grunge bands, theirs stood out because they had this kind of different element to it. And wouldn't you know it, Mia and the band in 1989 thought, where are we going to go to try and really make it in the grunge world? Where's that M? Hollywood. Seattle, Washington.

Oh, OK. That makes sense. That is where the whole grunge scene was, you know, the biggest. So they moved there in 1989 to Seattle just a few years before grunge, the the grunge wave like hit the city with full force and me and her friends were newcomers to what was becoming like this burgeoning scene if they wanted to be part of the community they had to uh make a space for themselves so they moved from ohio to seattle they moved into this like rundown property, which they fondly dubbed the rat house. And you just got to love them. You got to love them.

I feel like I'd be friends with all of them. Oh, for sure. We'd be so we'd be having, meanwhile, these socialites are having seances at the Dakota and we're like in the rat house having a real seance. It would be like,

why don't they invite us anywhere? I don't get it. Why don't they want us at their seance it would be like why don't they invite us anywhere i don't get it why don't they want us at their seance how come fendi never sends me a tasteful tennis tennis outfit yeah i don't understand so the gits were quickly welcomed into the grunge scene uh and one journalist named adam tepedel and said they were very involved in the music scene. They took care of the scene and took care of each other. They put out their own records. They put out records by each other's bands. Just a very supportive.

I know. I love it. Very supportive grunge scene. A couple other bands that were kind of in their same circles were DC Beggars and Seven Year Bitch. That's another thing you call me sometimes. You're the DC Beggar and I'm the Seven Year Bitch. Oh, man. These must be bands.

I don't know them, but I'm also not like cool. Like, I don't know if you know these bands or anything. I've never heard of Seven Year Bitch, but they're about to be like my Spotify, like rap at the end is gonna be like joe spleen and seven year bitch and the rats and an acon an acon and that one acon song oh my god yeah so i mean they knew what they were doing like you could just tell these were fun folks. So their house, the Rat House, as it will always be known in my heart, was a social spot for parties and support. It was kind of like a meeting house, you know, where people would meet and party and just get together.

If they had texting back then, what year was this? Yeah. Well, it was 19, early 90s. So not quite yet. Maybe a pager. You know, if they had texting, it would be like, meet me at the rat house. Meet me. Or like, they'd have like a Facebook fan page. On the pager, it would be like, mm at rh. And you'd be like, what does it mean? Oh, my pagers.

My beeper says I have to get to the rat house. Oh, lordy. Or it'll just say like seven and you'll know like seven year bitch is around oh i immediately would understand that one yeah then you would go yeah then you'd be there so uh elizabeth davis simpson speaking of seven year bitch uh was part of that band and she said that mia would often pop into their rehearsals just to like give them a thumbs up and say you're doing great so she's just I know I love it she's just a very supportive very um friendly and outgoing person some people however described her as more stoic with like a very uh closely guarded private side um even the people closest to her felt like she had some

darker parts of herself that she didn't like you know give up as willingly but they also thought of her as very kind with an extremely great sense of humor um she was obviously very serious about music but wasn't afraid to laugh at herself for example when she was little her family called her chicken legs because she was double jointed and kind of had like a wobbly walk. So they called her chicken legs. And so as an adult, she got a chicken tattooed on her leg. Oh, that's fun.

Isn't that cute? Yeah. I just love that. It's kind of like when you call me tarantula legs and one day I'll have a tarantula on my. One day you'll wake up and I will have placed a tarantula on your leg it'll be great okay well the next move is mine i guess after that so oh boy okay so she and her bandmates uh dressed up as court jesters for one of their filmed performances she was just a goofy fun person but she was also sentimental she would collect keepsakes um like

she kept the dress that she wore to her sister's wedding even though like she was not kind of a frilly dress type girl she it was so important to her that she had worn it in her sister's wedding that she kept it which i think is very sweet Mia was also self-assured and determined to pursue what she wanted, what she believed in. Her aesthetic basically was the polar opposite of the kind of rich, wealthy, privately schooled household she grew up in. But her family was still very supportive of her, which is, you know, kind of unheard of. So I love that. She had dyed hair. She wore thrifted clothes um she kind of decided to forego wealth and these are things that uh her family were like very proud of her for you know even though they didn't totally fall in the same camp she still she sounds like that cousin at thanksgiving that you just want so badly to like you yes oh yeah that everybody likes really maybe she does maybe she like hasn't

like she probably does a distant understanding and appreciation for you but it's not enough for you when you need the constant everyone's just kind of like in their sunlight yeah yeah it's like i just want you to take me on your next adventure i'll just leave my open journal out and be like oh did you um see that song i was writing it was called dirty little rat or something so um it's called i'm a dirty i'm a thirsty little rat and i live in a i live in the the walls of the dakota um yeah but the ship but the ship not the building okay it's a fall out boy song that's why there's so many words okay anyway let's get back to this bullshit okay so her family was very supportive of her even though you know she kind

of eschewed the things that they had raised her with uh her father even claimed that he had worked to teach mia as a young girl to understand that people from different communities and life experiences were just as valuable and just as important i know and he said of mia and her peers their road is not easy society imagine someone's dad like this should be if you have um you know, any sort of issues with parental approval, everybody out there, maybe listen. Close your eyes. Listen to this and pretend like this is your dad talking. OK, so this guy said of his daughter, Mia, and her peers in Seattle.

Their road is not easy. Society in general is quick to judge young people on appearance first and quality of character second mia was different she never judged anybody and he he just supported her all the way all the way through which makes of course the story just that much sadder so the gits for what it's worth attracted a loyal local following uh even though they were kind of just doing their own thing not trying to pursue fame or anything like that they did get a local following leading up to their 1992 debut album called frenching the bully which is i literally just want to marry them i have a they should be invited into the dakota that's how creative they are like get

them in there they like they all have like bisexual energy like and like it's like they're all just way too fucking cool i could never touch them with a 10-foot pole because they wouldn't even being in the room like you would want to like melt into the wall you'd be like i don't want to even step foot on this i just want to watch them work i just want to work i just want to be in their glow like i just i just wish making the band was around to film it so i could see what's happening behind the scenes this is i mean everything it just it also feels like a very like maybe intentionally maybe unintentionally well-oiled system where it just seems like their whole thing like they just naturally all work so well together it's so wholesome yeah it's not competitive you're just

they're all rooting for each other which i feel like is kind of something you hear at least i mean i'm not in i know this is going to be shocking i'm wearing a literal pink fallout boy t-shirt right now but uh i'm not in on the punks like like the real like underground punk scene. Right. But I have friends who are who have been and they're like, oh, it's just all about like you host a show at your place and we'll host yours next. You know, it's a lot of like, well, I feel like each other up supporting each other, that kind of thing. Again, I am not the the usual spokesperson for punk world. the usual spokesperson for punk world but i feel like anything i have ever learned about punk or like the the culture of it is like it's just warm and kind and it's almost like they seem scary at first if you don't understand them just because like the aesthetics of it all but like yeah i i've never met someone who was in punk who wasn't just who was just like a kind

and just right i mean i'm sure that are okay like i imagine there are definitely punk rockers who are assholes like don't get me wrong but i think you're right that like from what i've seen as well the people i know in those circles are like we all just like cheerlead each other on yeah the stereotype i've built in my head of them is that it's just like kind of like how every how every um and i'm sure there's assholes who are the exception of course but same with like growing up and like in our childhood hearing like a cult and satanic and all this stuff and like it's so scary right and it's like i've never met a satanist who i didn't want to hang out with.

Like they just all seem so lovely. It wasn't like very empathetic. And yeah, exactly. It's like the, the, the big headline of it seems scary. But then when you meet them, it's like, oh, these are actually the loveliest people I've ever met. So I think the cutest part is like, falls into that. I agree. And I think the cutest part is like her dad is like yeah hell yeah you know don't judge them they're great people and they have such great character and i'm like wow most people but many people's parents would just immediately close that door and be like forget it you've crossed a line you know but i just i love how um much support and love she had in her life um all the way back in kentucky i just love it so anyway they

released their debut album frenching the bully our favorite and um just so good it's giving a mortal portal but not douchebag but like but right but like on the good side on the flip the quite opposite of that yeah so mia had a presence on stage that was, people described it as electric. Her voice was described, which my heart, as a mashup of singers such as Bessie Smith, Janis Joplin, just a very, I don't even know the right way to put it, but like a very earthy sound almost. I mean, remember that guy said one of her bandmates said the first time he heard her sing, he started crying. Yeah. She just apparently had a really incredible voice. And the band as a whole was blowing people away with their sound. People described, I mean, maybe there were drugs involved here, but people described their live performances as quote, transcendent so you know either way it sounds something right they were either handing out the correct uh dose of ecstasy or and or they were putting on an incredible show you know something they were doing was working wonders and people in town were loving it so uh there was this guy named tim som of atlantic records and when he talked about this

whole era of the gits uh he said quote we were used to seeing dynamic charismatic punk rock performers in front of people rarely did they have voices as powerful or as rooted in rock and blues tradition as mia she was just this melodic powerful foghorn at the center of the tsunami that was the gits holy shit yeah so they were making waves so to speak and mia herself um fun fact was obviously not a white male in a very white male dominated scene She was actually identified as a Latina woman. And so this also kind of helped her pave the way for other women in her community to follow suit and start making music and join bands. It was like she, I don't know, led the way, led the way for women of color to kind of participate in this men dominated dominated scene so by the summer of 1993

the band had made a strong name for itself and its newest singles were getting positive reviews from fans and even from music critics who were really into their sound a lot of people expected them to make it quote unquote and like you sort of said earlier you know go to hollywood like make it big get signed by a label they drove down to la for another band's show but while they were there they met with tim som who i just quoted earlier um and at that point he was the a and r representative which stands for artists and repertoire the amr representative for atlantic records so he is a big wig or was at the time he later said once i became aware of the gits and i saw them perform it was a no-brainer for me so atlantic records has eyed these folks the gits were signed but not even a week later everything came crashing down in the

worst way a week later a week less than a week yeah yeah so around midnight on july 7th 1993 mia was at comet tavern in seattle Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood drinking with friends. And she admitted she was feeling down about her ex-boyfriend, Robert Jenkins, because he had started seeing a new girl and she felt insecure and just bummed out about it. So her friends, meaning well, suggested she go talk to him. And, you know, first she said, no, I don't think so. But after a few drinks, she agreed. She said, I'm just going to pop in.

Just see what it's about. Just check in. See, I mean, that's something I would fucking drink in the scene. Drink in the scene. Drink in some drinks. Drink in the scene. See what's happening. So she agreed.

She said, you know what? Yeah, I'll go talk to him so according to rolling stone because they do a pretty full coverage of this whole story mia reportedly left the bar around midnight to look for robert jenkins her ex at a rehearsal space about one block away from the bar and when she arrived he wasn't there so instead she went to a friend's apartment in the same building right so she she goes down the street it's like a block away from the bar she pops into the recording space doesn't see her ex robert so her friend lives in the same building so she goes there instead she stays at this friend's apartment until about 2 a.m. And that would be the last time she was ever seen alive. Oh, wow. Okay.

So it's not known to us what Zapata did for the next 80 minutes. She may have gone to a taxi stand. She may have continued looking for her ex, Robert Jenkins. But what we do know is that around 3.20 a.m., a sex worker walking in the central area almost two miles from the comet noticed Mia zapata's body lying on a deserted street of course authorities were called first responders attempted to revive her but it was too late and horribly investigators determined that mia had first been raped and then strangled to death with the hoodie cords of her own

gits sweatshirt i didn't even know you could do that isn't that horrific by her own hoodie strings yeah yeah oh my god i literally never even thought that was a possible way yeah that totally makes sense though i mean i mean it does unfortunately but that's a very intentional way to go that wasn't an accident it feels very it feels very especially because it was her band shirt right you know it's just yeah it also it but also just feels like it was like a very personal or like intimate way to to that's a very up close and personal way to it sure it sure does yes so mia didn't show up for rehearsal the next day obviously and that was not at all like her so her friends started calling around town they started calling hospitals police stations at this point they didn't know obviously

that she had been killed and then finally and this part just got me because i thought to myself imagine being in this room where somebody finally says what everyone's thinking, which is we have to call the morgues. They've called all the hospitals. They've called all the police stations. I wouldn't even call a morgue. That's innovative. It is. And yeah, I thought to myself, I don't know who would have come up with that.

But that person would have had to break through an awkward silence, I imagine. Yeah. So, yeah, somebody suggests, you know, we got to call a morgue. And they did. And unfortunately, their worst fears were confirmed when the medical examiner told Steve Moriarty, quote, it's your singer. I'm sorry. You should get someone to come down and identify her. Oh, my God. quote it's your singer i'm sorry you should get someone to come down and identify her oh my god and steve who had made this call to the morgue uh later said it was a lifelong traumatic moment yeah which gave me goose cam i don't know the phrase lifelong traumatic moment is very

chilling so of course understandably mia's death shook the scene to its core honestly very similar to the way kurt cobain's death uh a year later would affect the grunge community as well there was no evidence at the scene no blood no semen no fingerprints no footprints no witnesses and no leads and so investigators are like, we have to consider everyone. So they took Mia's journals and they searched for clues in them. Maybe there was a jealous ex. Was there a stalker that her friends didn't know about? Was it a different band, like a rival band? Could it have been one of her bandmates and best friends. They couldn't imagine it being, but they had to check.

And of course, knowing she'd been trying to find her ex, Robert Jenkins, they look into him immediately. But of course, he has an airtight alibi. He was with several other people. Joan Jett, actually, of Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, told Rolling Stones magazine, you can imagine this vibe

that sort of came over Seattle when it happened people just not knowing who did it so I imagine like we've been talking up this whole community as like so close and supportive and tight-knit and then for something like this to happen I imagine is very rattling because you're like, is it some, is it one of us? You know, is it somebody that she took care of that, you know, Ooh, it's just creepy. So, you know, they didn't know who it was. They barely had any clues or virtually zero and the suspense and fear was very damaging to the people in Mia's life. Her friends and family continually spoke with journalists,

just trying to get the word out there for the killer to be caught. But there was an unusually high number of murders in the area that summer. And because of all of the, I don't know, the spike in crime, police were overwhelmed with the number of investigations and the case just kind of faded away. Really? And yes. so was it like a cold case for a while uh sure was wow oh my gosh yep yep so women who either knew mia or even knew about her were suddenly changing their habits um people avoided women especially avoided going out alone especially in that particular neighborhood where she had been killed.

And, you know, people were thinking if her murderer were an obsessed fan, maybe anyone else in the music scene could be the next target, right? So the community rallied behind the Gits, which was Mia's chosen second family. Gitz, which was Mia's chosen second family. And Steve, Joe and Matt decided to organize benefit concerts because they needed to raise money to hire a private investigator because they wanted to get to the bottom of this. Smart. Yeah, exactly. So they are, of course, as we know, very creative. And they organized this benefit concert, which actually featured Nirvana as a special guest. Shut up. Wow shut up wow yeah yeah so they you know nirvana helped uh i think i've actually watched video clip of this like years ago but nirvana actually helped spread the word about mia trying to get some answers out there

and uh the the money came in they were able to hire a private investigator um who started her own digging and meanwhile valerie agnew of seven year bitch founded the home alive organization which provided imagine like trying to get a loan for starting an organization you're like hi i'm valerie of seven year bitch well you know they had to ask like and what is your profession like how can we right exactly what's your company name yeah seven your bitch seven your bitch she just uh yeah um so she founded the home alive organization which provided self-defense information and resources to women badass love it in 1996 the gits released a benefit album called home alive which featured artists like pearl jam and sound garden like this yeah this had a big impact on this on the on the scene seven year bitch also released their second album which was called

viva zapata with songs dedicated to mia wow Wow, that's so sad. Joan Jett actually wrote her song Go Home about Mia and the music video as well and dedicated it to Mia and it was released on her band's 1994 album. MTV played the music video but refused to include the dedication to Mia at the end but for some reason they never said why, so we don't really know,

but they took that part out. The Gits reached out to Joan and she recorded a live album with the Gits in 1995. And unfortunately, even though they had been able to hire this private investigator and pay her, she was not able to dig up any, she dug up some weirdos.

If you watch that show i mentioned earlier there were some weird fans who uh one one one guy she kind of was looking into had a notebook that said god mia death and so she's like well i think we found our guy nope just a weirdo uh so you know she was kind of not getting anywhere the case went cold just like you just like you guessed uh for nearly a decade and of course me as loved ones were just stunned i mean 10 years of just no answers whatsoever then we get to december 2002 and that is when the washington state patrol crime lab took a dna sample that had been swabbed nine years earlier back in 1993 now this was a saliva sample that we've seen this a couple times thank god a pathologist or a medical

examiner took the initiative to get that DNA swab and freeze it, even though he there was no way to test it back then. He just knew we might need this. We don't know. We might need it. Yes. Basically took more than more than the evidence he needed, you know. And then when the time came and it was available for genetic testing, they had a sample that was frozen.

So wonderful. Love to see it. So this DNA sample was sent to the lab. And it was such a small sample. Had been around for so long. They didn't really expect all that much. And so they sent it in. And as expected, nothing.

No hits. No match. Until six months later, six months. In December of 2002, the lab called back out of the blue and said, someone's DNA was just entered into the system and it's a match. Oh, okay. Oh, okay. So basically, this DNA sample didn't match anybody in the system. And then only six months later, someone's DNA gets added. It was just perfect timing.

Perfect timing. So thank God this hit came through. And 48-year-old Cuban-born Jesus Mezquia, who's a fisherman in Florida, is the match to this sample. Was he like a mega fan or in love with her and she turned him down or? Nope. Okay. So they look through old police records and they discover a 1993 Seattle traffic ticket in Mesquia's name. So they place him in Seattle, even though he lives

in Florida, they place him in Seattle at the time of Mia's murder. And not only that, but he was actually staying with his girlfriend who lived 12 blocks away from where Mia's body had been found. So they... Well, ding, ding, ding to me. Ding, ding, ding. They fly down to Florida, but they don't want to tip him off quite yet. So they make up a ruse. I love a ruse, Christine. Love a good ruse. There's nothing like a ruse. Nothing like it. So they make this ruse, and they show him a number of women and asking if he's had sexual relations with them. And they show a number of women then they show a

picture of mia and he says no you know he says no to everybody and then he says no about mia and they say are you sure he says no i mean yeah he says yes i am sure that no i have not had relations with this person well not the bill clinton way but i guess he says no so what they were doing is they were giving him one chance to claim that he had somehow been seeing Mia romantically, even though that would have been a stretch. But he could have used that as an excuse for why his saliva was found on her. But since he vehemently denied any relationship, they said, well, then your DNA must be on there for an unwilling reason. And we are going to arrest you. So they nailed him.

Good job. I love a ruse. God damn it. You know, a ruse. It's just so good. A plan. I'd rather not,

but a ruse. Forget it. Oh, I'm locked in any day, especially when it's like that, when it's, we're going to trick a man. Oh,

when it's justice that, when it's, we're going to trick a man. When it's justice. Oh, done. Grunge justice. Try a ruse. Okay. Anyway, so he's moved to Seattle for trial. He's sentenced to 27 years in prison after just three days of jury deliberation. That took place March 25th, 2004.

three days of jury deliberation. That took place March 25th, 2004. And the sentence exceeded the maximum allowed sentence due to aggravating circumstances surrounding the attack, which I guess was violating a previous Supreme Court ruling. So then later the sentence was overturned and Jesus was resentenced within the guidelines, but it ended up being basically the same amount of time. So sometimes the legal system makes me want to just bash my head against the wall but whatever it's just confusing mia's wake was held in washington and she was buried uh in her hometown

of louisville kentucky on january 21st 2021 her killer died in prison at 66 years old and steve uh who we had discussed earlier told rolling stone i was actually thinking for years how i would react when he was released he was a profoundly distracting influence on my life for the last 25 years good riddance steve is full of these zingers he's the one who said a lifelong trauma or whatever like he's i feel like he should for days get the band back together in 2002 or whenever it was even today get the do a reunion show with all the people who helped bring the killer oh you know and like bring uh mia's killer to justice yeah like i thought she was but maybe she's not let's find out is this podcast figuring oh janice shoplin's certainly not alive but uh joan jett is yeah she's only 65

yeah so joan jett and the gets should get back together yeah she's only 65 yeah so joan jett and the gets should get back together do a little beep boop bop look what we did fuck this guy they should do a uh a grunge to kerplunge or whatever i said because i feel like they did a fun like twist on uh the genre genre twist genre bender if you will i love it well i feel like i would tiktok would eat that shit up you know that's what i'm saying just saying anyway if you know anybody who knows anybody who knows them you let them know that that was our idea and then they do yeah yeah then we get credit that's what i'm saying because i want we're not very we're not punk enough to say we don't want the credit for it what is what does your shirt say again it says someone someone in Fall Out Boy loves me. Okay.

So that's the kind of vibe we're offering. And if that's of interest to you, Joan Jett, then you let us know. You get what you see. You see what you get. You know, that whole thing. Yeah. Nothing special. Just a couple of rats that are not welcome to the rat's nest or whatever it's called.

A couple of dirty rats in our own rat nest. Yeah. Speaking of rats, everybody. Okay. Wait. My story is not done, though. though okay but you remind me when it's time okay okay we can drink the water now i just didn't know if you thought that the story was over no i need to do it we need to do it we need to do it afterwards so you finish first oh after okay great okay so steve said uh you know he's this asshole murderer has been a profoundly distracting influence on my life. Good riddance. The Gits released a statement that said, Mia Zapata was an extraordinary human being. She was a beloved friend, a gifted songwriter, musician, visual artist, and performer. Rather than focusing on her death, we prefer to remember her friendship, talent, humor, and the incredible art and music she left to the world. And thankfully, those things have not been forgotten.

Mia and the Gits music still continue to thrill and motivate fans and aspiring artists, new young people entering the genre. And the Home Alive organization has also left its mark, which is great because, of of course they provide safety resources and support to anybody who needs it and so they've made a big mark as well mia herself is considered an important figure in the legacy of latina women in the punk rock and riot girl musical movements and according to joan jett who's very much alive as we just discovered her her legacy should be beautiful strong punk rock music coming from a woman's perspective because that's who she was mia's emotions music

and voice were too powerful to be silenced and her own experiences that she shared through music still resonate with global audiences today as you can probably tell and that is the story of the murder of mia zapata wow what what uh what a character she is that was um you know in the darkest sense one of my favorite stories you've done really wow yeah i'm so happy to hear that i mean yours was one of my favorites we've ever done so stop eva write that down because someday we'll go we'll never we never like any of our episodes and then even can be like you said you like this one on air so also eva can you write down the um that one of the funniest things that's happened recently is last week when i

said fee-fi-fo-fum in reference to me trick-or-treating as a giant as a child i forgot about i absolutely forgot about that for like an audio that was just about one of my favorites um i forgot about that that was was that the same episode as corny sean khan because i think we... No, Corny Sean Con, that didn't happen in an episode. That was in our after chat. No one knows. Oh, shit. That's a Patreon only.

You guys can't know about it. It's so special. We have to make a shirt. Oh, we have to make shirts. Can that be our Patreon exclusive item? Like, you can't buy it. Yes, that could be our Patreon exclusive item. Oh, my God.

Eva, Eva, Eva. Oh, my God. Yes! Yeah, if you join our Patreon patreon you just might be getting a a shirt that says au revoir a la corny choco and you won't even know what it means you just might you just might you better get on it it's kind of a big deal it's kind of a big deal okay anyway okay with that folks uh thank you, Christine, for your grand storytelling. Oh, wow. You're so welcome. Thank you.

I've already found them and I've already found them. I'm going to go add them on Spotify. Yes. Hell yes. I'm going to do that too. All right. And that's why we drink.