Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - The Untold Story of How New York Became a City for the Rich

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

Jonathan Mahler is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine and the author of the bestselling Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning, which was adapted as an ESPN miniseries, and The Challenge, a New York Times Notable Book. His journalism has received numerous awards and been featured in The Best American Sports Writing. About the host: Anthony Scaramucci is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge, a global alternative investment firm, and founder and chairman of SALT, a global thought leadership forum and venture studio. He is the host of the podcast Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci. A graduate of Tufts University and Harvard Law School, he lives in Manhasset, Long Island. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Okay, when I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids, and I want to give back to the community. Ooh, then it's the vacation of a lifetime. I wonder if my head of office has a forever setting. An IG Private Wealth advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business, your family, and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at IG Private Wealth.com.

When a country's productivity cycle is broken, people feel it in their paychecks, their communities, their futures. What does this mean for individuals, communities, and businesses across the country? Join business leaders, policymakers, and influencers for CG's national series on the Canadian Standard of Living, productivity and innovation. Learn what's driving Canada's productivity decline and discover actionable solutions to reverse it. This episode is brought to you by Tell Us Online Security. Tax season is the worst. You mean hack season?

Sorry, what? Yeah, cybercriminals love tax forms. But I've got TELUS online security. It helps protect against identity theft and financial fraud so I can stress less during tax season or any season. Plan started just $12 a month. Learn more at tellus.com slash online security. No one can prevent all cybercrime or identity theft.

Conditions apply. Hello, I'm Anthony Scaramucci, and this is Open Book, where I talk to some of the brightest minds about everything surrounding the written word. That's everything. That's from authors and historians to figures in entertainment, political activists, and of course, Wall Street. Before we dive in, make sure to follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcast. And don't forget to leave a review. Good or bad.

I want to hear from you. I want to hear whether you're enjoying it or where we can improve. And I can take the hits. So let me know. If you don't like something, say it straight. Now let's get into it. Welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci, joining us as Jonathan Mahler.

He wrote an amazing book. He's wrote several books, but this is the most recent one. The Gods of New York, egotists, idealists, and the birth of the modern city, 1986 to 1990. I would like to tell all my young viewers I wasn't alive back then, but I was actually your age back then. And I love this book, Jonathan. It's great to have you on. I told my step, this is the book that I didn't know that I needed to have in my life.

It's got everything in it. It's lots of juice. I'm sure, like your... And of course, Jonathan wrote the Bronx is Burning, a very famous tale about New York that got turned into a series on ESPN. Is this going to get turned into a series, sir? It is. Yeah, this is, there's a scripted series in development for FX.

So, yeah. Okay. Well, I'm going to look forward to that as well, but I have to tell you that this was a phenomenal book and soon to be a bestseller. Before we get into the book, tell us a little about you. Okay. How did you get into the cultural documentary, political thriller? You're a time machine, actually. You're a personal time machine of mine.

How did you end up like that, sir? Yeah. Well, I did, the way I ended up writing this book, actually, I was, you know, I work at the New York Times. And I am at the magazine generally at the Sunday magazine. But in 2016, I was assigned to the campaign, the political campaign in 2016, which you remember very well. And, you know, I was not doing, I wasn't following a candidate or anything. I was kind of writing longer pieces that dug into the past of some of the candidates. And because I had written the book, you mentioned, ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning, which is about New York in the 70s,

now it's a little bit of a historian of New York City. So I kind of gravitated naturally toward Trump, Trump in the 80s. And I wrote a few pieces about Trump in the 80s. And that got me looking back at that whole period of time and how crazy it was, how crazy the 80s were in the city. And the sort of larger-than-life characters who were kind of striding around the city back then. You know, Trump obviously, Al Sharpton, Rudy Giuliani, Spike Lee, Larry Kramer, lots of larger-than-life figures. And I thought, you know, this would be a interesting period to spend some time researching and recapturing. And it was in the end kind of a bit of a sequel to the Bronx's burning, which was really about kind of New York hitting its low point in the 70s.

And this book, The Gods of New York is about the kind of rebirth of New York in the 80s and kind of the rise of Wall Street and real estate and this kind of new economy and new kind of cultural life that kind of sprang up in the 80s in New York. Yeah, you know, I lived it. So I'm a New Yorker. I was addicted at that time in my life to the New York Post and the Daily News. And so all of these stories were on those pages. But they were not as dense as they weren't as deep as this. You started in 1986. The city is booming at this moment. It went through a terrible period of time in the mid-70s, early 80s. But now the city's booming. But underneath, the city is about to crack wide open again. Tell us what was happening. Take us there because by 1989 into the 1993 period, we had very high crime, homelessness, et cetera. Exactly. So basically in 86, you had, you know, Wall Street was booming. The real estate industry was booming. I mean, the city had really, really kind of sprung back to life.

But at the same time, you know, there was this wealth was really kind of concentrated in the upper classes. and there was the kind of emergence of a new kind of, you know, sort of poorer class, the underclass, as they were known. And then what happens is you get this series of kind of crazy, crazy confluence of events. So from, you know, from crack to homelessness, as you say, all of these kind of racial incidents. Howard Beach, you know, the story of kind of Tijuana Brawley, the Central Park Jogger. And then, of course, Black Monday, which, which, you know, you may. I remember the Wall Street crash in October of 87. So all these events kind of conspire in AIDS.

I don't think I mentioned AIDS. All these events kind of conspire to throw the city into this, you know, kind of crazy period of turmoil and upheaval. And, you know, some of its racial, some of its kind of class. Some of it is, you know, is around AIDS and this idea that the city didn't care enough about all the kind of gay men who were dying in New York. And the city really just kind of kind of explored. explodes during these years. You know, one of the things that grabbed me, because at the time of this genre, one of the best-selling books out there was the Bonfire of the Vanities. So you remember that book.

You write about it. It was written by Tom Wolfe. And, you know, the book, The Bonfire of the Vanities and the Gods of New York, when I read those things as a sociologist, I'm not one, but I'm playing one on this podcast. It makes me think that the city of New York was a. city was becoming a city for the rich. Am I right about that or wrong about that? If I'm right about that, explain what happened. Yeah, I mean, that is, you are right about it. The city was becoming a city of the rich. I mean, it was, you know, the amazing thing about New York, the whole sort of story of New York, right, is that it's the sort of land of opportunity, the place where you go to make

it, right? That's the, that's the kind of cliche about New York that has sort of proven true. And, you know, what happened in the 80s is, you know, in the past, the city had had a, had a big kind of middle class, a big working class. And there were, you know, there were factory jobs. The city had a big kind of city and shipping and manufacturing economy. Now in the 80s, the city gets become, it is about finance and the city is about real estate and all the kind of related industries, insurance, law, et cetera. And so it's, it's, you know, this class divide kind of starts to happen. And, and, you know, one more thing I'd mention is, is bonfire of the vanities. I mean, of course, you know, you bring that up as this, this kind of iconic book from the 80s. I mean, in many ways, I thought about this book often as the

kind of nonfiction bonfire of the vanities. I mean, I, you know, I read that book in college, and it left a big impression on me. And, and, you know, really, I'm, I'm, what I'm doing in this book is, is recapturing that period of time, but, you know, this is the real life story. This is like, I know what really happened. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it says a tremendous amount of intrigue, of course, the protagonist or the villain, however he wanted to describe him, was Sherman McCoy. And Sherman, you know, it was like Gordon Gecko. When I did the Wall Street 2 movie with Michael Douglas, they let me play myself with that movie. And Michael said to me, you know, I was a villain. All the Wall Street guys wanted to be Gordon Gecko and all the Wall Street guys

wanted to be weirdly Sherman McCoy. But these were two, uptuce sort of odd figures. I don't know. I didn't want to be those. I just wanted to see if I could get ahead. live a little bit of the American dream. But let's go to, let's go to the complications as it relates to the geopolitical, or at least the city political, I should say. We have the rise of Zoran Mondami now. His campaign is kind of an echo or maybe a correction of what went down in the 80s. How do you connect his platform to what was set in motion back then? Yeah, I mean, it's pretty, I think you can really connect the dots pretty cleanly between the, to. I mean, I think the 80s was really the moment when the city, when the city's economy shifted, right?

When when the old, the old kind of, you know, working class city was dead. That city died in the 1970s and that that kind of infamous period of urban decay and urban blight, the subways covered in graffiti. The Ford to City dropped dead. New York was broke. And then it's, and then it's reborn. And it's reborn. Its economy is now reborn, but it's now, it's now kind of orbiting around Wall Street, orbiting around finance, orbiting around money. And that's sort of what happens in the ensuing decades, right, is that the rich continue to get richer. The poor kind of stay where they are. And even when when wages start to increase, you still have the cost of living really kind of outpacing them. And you get to a kind of a point where the city

has become unaffordable for the middle class. And I think that's what Zoran is tapping into. Is he going to win? Yes, I think it's pretty clear that he's going to win. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, I think the business community is doing everything it can. But I don't really see it. I mean, do you?

Well, listen, I'm a big polymarket guy. You know, he's at 82% of the polymarkets. So if, you know, if Eric Adams and. Curtis Slewa and Andrew Colmore are in the race. I mean, it'll almost guarantee his electoral success. So, you know, we'll hope he gets a little bit more adaptive and less ideological. Let's go to your killer lineup. You've got Trump, Mayor Ed Koch, Rudy Giuliani, Al Sharpton, the much larger version of Al Sharpton.

He's only shrunk by that 200 pounds since then. Spike Lee. Larry Kramer, is a big, big personalities. Who really understood the game that they were playing and who got played? I think everybody you mentioned was was was playing the game well. I think that that what what all of these guys and and you know, short, you know, I think one way to think about this is, you know, someone asked me recently if I had written this book in 2014, would it have been a different book? And, you know, I think the answer is yes, because I had not yet seen Donald Trump reinvent himself as as a presidential candidate and the president. And I hadn't quite seen how. those skills that he really developed in the 1980s, that ability to capture and hold the public attention, that ability to really kind of use publicity as a form of power, that kind of shameless way that he kind of walked through the world, you know, it wasn't until he, you know,

became president, really, or ran his campaign that I saw, like, how he was able to take everything he learned in 1980s, New York, and apply it on really, on really, the biggest stage in the world. And the same thing is sort of true of all these characters, whether it's Larry Kramer or Al Sharpton or Rudy Giuliani, they all understood in the 80s in New York that if you could just, you know, get hold of the public's attention. And often they did that through the tabloids. But, you know, in Larry's, Larry Kramer's case with Act Up, he did it, you know, through protest, through real in-your-face protests. The more confrontational those Act Up protests could be the better. So that meant, you know, marching into St. Patrick's Cathedral literally during

Sunday morning mass and holding a protest there. You know, the more you could could kind of stir things up, the more effective you were at getting attention, the more power you had. And I think that, you know, it was sort of through the tabloids in particular, but also just through the life of the city in the 80s, that all these figures kind of learned that, that lesson, that lesson really that publicity is power. I looked up to Trump in the 80s. Read his book, The Art of the D-Hall. I wasn't even an outer borough kid, Jonathan.

I was a Long Islander. I was a Nassau County on the border of Queens. Family was a blue, you know, my dad was a blue-collar worker. So I looked up to Trump. Tell us about, because you write about him, there was a mystique to him for people like me. What was it?

Yeah. I mean, I'm at a little bit now, by the way. I just point that out, but I didn't book up to talk about. I know. I know. But what was it about? Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I think, I mean, you know, I think that, that first of all, this was a, this was a different moment. I mean, this was a very particular moment in time when when it suddenly became kind of, you know, okay and more than okay to, to flaunt your wealth. I mean, that, that's what the 80s were about. The 80s were kind of about excess about. Conspicuous consumption, yep. Conspicuous consumption, exactly. The masters of the universe, as kind of Tom Wolfe called them, right? And so, you know, I think that there was that kind of value shift, and he really embodied

that kind of more than anyone. You know, and I also think that, you know, there was a, there was a, look, that we've learned so much about him since then, right? So, I mean, I think that you can be forgiven for not knowing some of these things about him, not understanding some of these things about him at the time. time. And, you know, I think that, you know, one other thing that's, that's kind of important and it's easy to kind of lose sight of because, you know, one interesting thing is, you know, as I go back, as I went back and did this research, I saw that, you know, we all know that Trump was

obviously like a big figure in the tabloids, right? The New York Post really built him up. I mean, that's, but, you know, so did the New York Times. The New York Times, you know, gave Trump an enormous amount of tension, positive attention in the 80s. And then you kind of think, like, how did that happen? And then you have to remind yourself that, you know, this was a moment when New York was just coming back from the dead. It was just kind of pulling itself out of this death spiral in the 70s. And along comes this, this guy, Donald Trump, this, this, you know, this, this, you know, real estate developer from Queens who's investing in the city, right? Who's like, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to build, I'm going to build Trump Tower. I'm going to, I'm going to, you know, rebuild the Commodore hotel. I'm going to rebuild Woolman Rink. And so, you know, the city was. You know, you know, the city was. And so, you know, you know, was kind of, I think it was easy to admire someone who was kind of doubling down on New York, you know, not long after so much of the country in the world had really given up on New York. So I think that that made him kind of a more, you know, kind of almost admirable figure, someone who people like kind of respected.

Looking back, we both lived through the era, looking back with a distance, what did we not all see clearly at that time? what we really should have seen. Yeah. I think quite a few things. I would say that, you know, first of all, look, I mean, I think we didn't realize, you know, kind of first and foremost, we didn't realize what the ultimate consequences would be of, of, you know, turning so much, turning so much power over to the kind of the business community and the, you know, private industry. I mean, I think, look, I'm not a, I don't, I wouldn't criticize those that, you know, in general, like New York needed to do something. And there's no question that sort of that the private sector and Wall Street saved New York.

I mean, it pulled New York out of this death spiral. But, you know, but at the same time, the city lost, you know, so much affordable housing. And, and, you know, policies kind of were set in place that made it, you know, really difficult for sort of a lot of people to, to make it in the city, to have opportunity in the city. Another thing that I feel like, you know, we didn't realize,

and this is, you know, a little bit of a kind of commentary about the media. You know, when we had those tabloids, those tabloids that you were, you were addicted to, right?

They, I think people think of tabloids as being really polarizing, right? Because, of course, they turn the world into a story of heroes and villains. They're like comic books, right? But at the same time,

what they also did was they got all of New York thinking about and and like worrying about the same things, right? They gave the city a kind of common narrative and a common storyline. And that made everyone feel invested in the life of the city in a way so that New York almost felt like a small town at times. And that is something I think we didn't realize how valuable that was, this sense that like New York was a single city and everyone was reading about the preppy murder, you know, about Robert Chambers and, you know, Jennifer Levin turning up, turning up dead in Central Park. And everyone was

reading about Howard Beach. And, and that made people kind of care about the city in a different way, I think. I think we've, we didn't realize at the time that, that having, you know, having, having a few outlets, a few media outlets that everyone read, that everyone followed, was, was really having an important effect on the kind of civic life of the city. Yeah, no quite. I mean, there was a grittiness there. There's a grittiness now. I will say this to you. This was the precursor to Giuliani, obviously. And so what ends up happening is he comes and cleans up to city. I submit that we had 20 years of reasonably good executive management in the city. That was Giuliani and then 12 years of Bloomberg. And that led to a better quality of life for all of us. Unfortunately, that is disintegrated. We've lost the plot. Do you think we can get the plot back? Or do you think we can get the plot back? do you think we're heading for a shit show? I think it's going to be tough. I mean, I think that, you know, I think that, you know, you look at, you look at Mondani's

platform and, you know, obviously it's extreme. And it's also, I think, you know, not, not terribly realistic. So, I mean, I don't, I think that the fact that he's, he is so popular sort of speaks to the fact that that the city is, is in a kind of crisis right now. But I think that, you know, we're in a kind of existential crisis now in New York. I mean, I think people feel like this has become, you know, a playground for the rich or what have you. But I don't, you know, I don't see an easy way out because, you know, this is like the, there's no, there's no question. It's the millionaires and, you know, the billionaires who are who are providing the big tax base in New York.

And that's, that's, you know, how are, that's, that's how the city is functioning. So it's not easy to see how we find our way out of this, how this becomes a kind of a more equal city, given that reality. I don't know. What do you think? It's going to be very tough. You know, we may have to do what happens in San Francisco and bottom before things get better. It's unfortunate. So we're down to the podcast piece of our episode where we have five words that we come up with for our authors.

I'm going to read the word of the two words and then you're going to react to the word. Give me a sentence or two. You ready? Yeah. If I say Wall Street, you say what, in context of your book? Gordon Gecko, Michael Douglas. Greed is good. Greed is good, Alan.

You know, Boski, right? Ivan Bosky, for sure, yeah. Right? If I say 1986, what do you think? I say Ed Koch's re-election. I say Howard Beach, which was the sort of tragic. a group of black men find themselves in an all white neighborhood in Queens and are chased by a group of white teenagers with baseball bats and one is chased under the

expressway and killed. I think, let's see. I mean, that's pretty good. Yeah. Well, you see,

you left out the big piece to me. The mess. Thank you. Are we waiting for that, John? That was the first thing you came to mine. But at nine years, at this point out.

to my friends that if I got to wait another 39 years for a med victory, I'll be 100 years old. Okay, let's go to Zoran Mondami. Zoran Mondami. Socialist, I would say the future of New York. I would say, gosh, what else? I mean, I would say excitement. I think there is genuine excitement around him, for better, for worse. yeah okay all right let's go to the next one ready i say the word new yorker you say what

well magazine for for one um i uh i would say um you know i mean i think i that is actually something i i i really kind of thought about a lot while i was writing this book because i mean i think you know this this idea of of like the new yorker as a person who kind of cares about the city, who doesn't just live in this city, right, but who is, who loves the city. And, you know, that's, that's, that's, and sort of believes in the promise of the city and the possibility of the city. That's, I guess, my definition of a New Yorker, not just a, not just a resident, but someone who sort of believes in the idea of New York, what Mario Cuomo kind of called the New York idea, right?

Right. Let's go to what the words New York. You say what? Frank Sinatra. I would say, um, still the place. It is. It is. It is.

It is the best. I mean, I mean, he's going to torture me, Zor Rand, because he hates Hedge one managers and people like me, but I'll never leave it.

You know what I mean? Maybe, maybe your next book will be the demons of New York. The people with shit, you know, bad stuff. But listen, you've written an amazing book.

I want to thank you for coming on. Love every minute of it. Jonathan Mahler, the gods of New York. What a great book. Egotist, Idealist, Opportunist, and the birth of the modern city, 1986 and 1990. What's next for you before I let you go?

I don't know. I mean, I'm, you know, I'm still at the time, so I'm, you know, I guess for the moment, I'm just going to kind of refocus on my magazine stuff, but I'm, you know, definitely, definitely planning another book. I'm just not sure what it is yet. Well, listen, this is a great one. You're going to have to try to top this, sir. It's going to be hard. I wish you great success on another book, but I want people to go out and buy this one.

What a great narrative about what happened in our great city 34 years ago. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. I am Anthony Scaramucci, and that was Open Book. Thank you so much for listening. If you like what you hear, tell your friends, and make sure you hit follow or subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast. While you're there, please leave us a rating or review. If you want to connect with me or chat more about the discussions,

it's at Scaramucci on X or Instagram. I'd love to hear from you. I'll see you back here next week.