The Misery Machine - Michael Alig & The Club Kids | The Death of the Party Monster | NYC Club Scene in the 90's

Episode Date: January 4, 2021

Michael Alig was an American club promoter and convicted felon. He was the self proclaimed "King of the Club Kids," a group of young New York City clubgoers who became a cultural phenomenon in the late 1980s and early 1990s through their flamboyant costumes and their excessive use of party drugs. In March 1996, Alig and his roommate, Robert D. "Freeze" Riggs, killed fellow Club Kid Andre "Angel" Melendez in a confrontation over amongst other things, a delinquent drug debt. The pair then dismembered the body and disposed of Melendez's remains in the Hudson River, where they were later discovered by children playing on a beach in Staten Island.  A very special thank you to Levi for supporting our show as our highest tier patron! Join Our Facebook Group to Request a Topic: https://t.co/DeSZIIMgXs?amp=1 Support Our Patreon For More Unreleased Content: https://www.patreon.com/themiserymachine PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/themiserymachine Instagram: miserymachinepodcast Twitter: misery_podcast Discord: https://discord.gg/kCCzjZM #themiserymachine #podcast #truecrime  Source Material: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Alig https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/26/style/michael-alig-dead.html https://www.youtube.com/user/ThePeeew Documentaries/Films: Glory Daze: The Life and Times of Michael Alig (2015), Party Monster (2003), Party Monster: The Shockumentary (1998).  

Oh, hey, we're the misery machine. I'm Miery. And I'm Drewby. And if you couldn't tell by all these funny lights we have going on in the closet, we are doing the life and death of Michael Allig, probably the most famous club kid and the subject of the movie Party Monster. We lost him this Christmas, so he unfortunately will join the ranks of George Michael, and it's terrible and it's sad.

It's very, very sad that we have such a culture of tragic events like this around the holidays. But if you're listening on YouTube, please hit like and subscribe. appreciate all the help we've gotten so far. And if you're new here, hitting subscribe and hitting the bell notification ensures that you won't miss a single video we put out. So that further ado. The death of the party monster.

Born and raised in South Bend, Indiana, Michael Allig was the second of two sons born to John and Elka Allig. His mother, a native of Bremerhaven, Germany, moved to the United States after marrying his father, a computer programmer. They, however, divorced when Allig was forced. years old.

Alec was a straight-A student throughout school, but he was often bullied because of his sexual orientation. After graduating in 1984, he studied architecture at Fordham University in New York City before transferring to the Fashion Institute of Technology. There he met a student named Ludovic, the boyfriend of artist Keith Herring, who introduced Allig to the New York City nightlife scene through the now-defunct area club on Hudson Street. We'll probably get to this later, but if any of you have seen Party Monster, you probably think that James St. James introduced Michael Allig to the club scene. This was not the case. No, think of that little scene in the donut shop. That didn't happen. No, but we'll get to that.

So Alec soon dropped out of school and worked as a busboy at Dancateria, which was a four-floor nightclub. While he was at Dancetaria, Alec began studying the nightclub business and soon became a party promoter. His ability to stage memorable parties helped him rise in New York's party scene. Alig and other regular clubgoers began creating flamboyant personas and were subsequently dubbed club kids. The club kids wore outrageous costumes that former club kid in Celebutant James St. James later described as part drag, part clown, and part infantilism. Some names that you might hear if you delve into the club kids who were around Alick at the time included Ernie Glam, Gitsy, Jenny Talia, superstar DJ Kiyoki, Amanda Lepoor,

Charlie Dash Pristano Joshua Davis Richie Rich Robert Freeze Riggs RuPaul who is arguably the most famous to come out of this One of the most successful club kids

though there was other people Somebody said Moby was a club kid Chloe Sevenier was also a club kid You'll also see sometimes pictures of Bjork Bjork used to be there I mean somebody that is kind of like a proto club kid that was there beforehand was Andy Warhol

and the death of Andy Warhol in 1987 was considered a huge blow to the New York City club scene. According to Michael Musto, who was also a club kid, or club kid adjacent, really, it was the death of downtown. Yeah, I mean,

he was able to hang around with them, to call him a club kid. I don't know if he identified as a club kid, but he was always there and people welcomed him. He's a proto-hipster. I mean, maybe.

It's important to note what the New York City club scene was like when Andy Warhol was alive or just in general, it was quite common that you would see celebrities there. You'd see like Madonna going to clubs and things like that. And that brought hype to the scene and it made people want to go. But slowly people were leaving New York and slowly people weren't going to clubs in New York City anymore.

People were starting to get more focused around L.A. So when Andy Warhol died, who was one of the last, you know, celebrities to frequent the club scene, people thought this was going to just kill the club scene entirely. Well, a lot of things were killing the club scene of that time. So you had the closure of Studio 54, which a lot of celebrities attended. You had the death of Warhol. You had just how crazy New York City was at that time, how drug-riddled and violent it was. Yeah, under Mayor Dinkins, who a lot of people said couldn't clean up the city, it was quite dangerous.

And the most important, I'd say, is the AIDS epidemic. Yes, that was a huge, huge. impact on a lot of things throughout America, but especially the club scene. So the club kids' outrageous behavior and dress won the media's interest. You would see them on the cover of Newsweek, people, time wrote articles about them, and most notably daytime talk shows. Yeah, they appeared on Donahue, the Joan Rivers show. We watched some of this who watched quite a bit of footage of this.

It's very exploitative, but this is how we were introduced. to that. Yeah, this was the silly stuff I watched when I was homesick from school. I used to love watching Geraldo and Ricky Lake where they had club kids, goth kids, things of that nature that it didn't do what I think the show wanted it to do for me. It just made me want to be part of it. And that is actually what happens. You had club kids from around the country or just young people from around the country now flooding to New York City to be part of the scene. Yeah, I mean, there was kids coming from Canada. I remember there's one girl who came from Saskatchewan or something like that just to be part of it.

And when you're growing up in small town nowhere, it was just farmland working class people. There's not a lot going on. And it seems like life is just dreariness. Seeing something like this gave you hope. Yeah, you had Gitsy. She came up from Miami. I don't know what Miami was like at that period of time, but people were coming from all over. Miami was a very different scene.

If you think of Grand Theft Auto, Vice City. I mean, Vice City made it look like it was the place to be. what are you talking about. At least it did for me. That's my favorite grand theft on. I just like the soundtrack. I mean, I do too. So Allig earned a reputation by booking parties at Rudolph Piper's danceitaria.

Piper had told Alig he was going to be given the club Mars before it opened to be his baby, basically. But the week before it opened, Piper fired Michael Allig claiming that he was worried about the entire club kid scene was going to go wrong one day under his direction. And he was right, unfortunately. It took some years, but he was right. Rudolph was a wild guy anyway. Yeah, I was surprised that he seemed to embrace the club kids and like all of this. So for him to have the sudden change of heart was quite surprising, but I guess he had a feeling that nobody else really had at the time.

I'm not sure what he did afterwards if he ended up closing up all his clubs. He's in Brazil. He's in Brazil. I meant during like all this time that the Michael Allig stuff happened after he let go of Allig. Oh, I'm not sure. Yeah, I'm not sure either. He is in quite a few interviews, but... He was on Geraldo as well. Yeah, he was on Geraldo. So what did Michael Allig do after being let go? Well, he did catch the attention of a couple other club owners. One most notably, Peter Gation. So he started booking parties for his club called the limelight. Now, at the time, and there was an interview with DJ Kiyoki, they went into the limelight to check it out and talk about it.

And he said to Michael, are you sure you want to do this? Because the limelight was considered very uncool at the time. They called it the slime light. Yeah, they called it the slime light. It was in an old cathedral and nobody would go there. Apparently the parties didn't have good turnout. So when Michael was interested in doing this, people were not having it at first. Some people thought this was kind of like a career suicide for him to do.

And it's interesting to me because it's a beautiful venue. It really is. It has high ceilings. It seemed to have a really nice light set up. It was pretty impressive, but with Michael's ingenuity, he was able to make it work, and parties at the limelight were such a hit that he began organizing parties for Gation's other clubs, which were Club USA, the Palladium, and Tunnel. And later, he became notorious for his outlaw parties.

So you may have seen videos of this. These were parties that Michael would basically arrange within 24 hours notice, and all he would do is Xerox a ton of flyers and hand them around. There was no internet then. All he could do was word of mouth and handing out flyers. And these were just smash hits. He had parties in a Burger King, a Dunkin' Donuts, abandoned houses. The most famous one, I think, is a Manhattan subway platform.

Go look up the video of this. There is just so many kids on this platform and the subway pulls up. They just mob the subway. And this would basically go on until the cops showed up. I think there was one that they stole like a bus or a tractor trailer truck. So what really happened was a city bus. The dramatization in Party Monster, they have Christina's superstar stealing and driving a semi-truck. And that was not really what happened.

It was really a city bus. It was a city bus. Yeah. So like the cops would show up. People would get arrested and they would just bail at that point. But this was a common thing. and it wasn't just once or twice. This happened multiple times.

I do know also at a train station, they did a runway fashion show. Yes, yes, they did do that. They also did these outlaw fashion shows at other places, too. I can't quite remember the other place, but I think the train station was the more popular or the most well-known place

when you look up these things. But this was all good viral marketing. This brought more attention to the club scene in general. And if you didn't really know or weren't really interested in the club scene, you happened upon the stuff, it really made you wonder, well, what's going on here? Like, what is this all about? Clearly, all these kids can't be wrong.

So I believe the fashion show they had on the train platform, they had timed it perfectly when they had a train coming in and a train coming out to get the most maximum exposure. See, it's just ingenious. And I just can't believe this stuff happened in the 80s, like prior to the internet. But it happens. So Alex Parties also became notorious, due in part to it. his own really bad behavior. So one thing he would do is he'd throw $100 bills on a crowded dance floor just to watch people

scramble and fight for them. In other instances, he would urinate on clubgoers. He would urinate on the new bartenders from up above them. There was like a balcony over the bar because like think about this as a church you have the different levels. So he'd urinate on the bartenders and they couldn't really do anything about it. He would urinate in people's drinks and hand them to them. They had an MC who was a drag queen, and I do know he had urinated in a Gatorade bottle and handed it to them.

Later, there was a person that became known as the pee drinker. Yes. He would do it as a stunt. Yeah, there was a pee drinker. There was someone who would do a champagne enema on stage. There was a lady that was doing champagne ename. There was a lady that would squirt breast milk. There was a lot of stripping.

People would just get completely naked. There was one situation, too, that it became a running joke because Allig would just pee on everyone and feed people his pee that they had this wheel of death to see who had hepatitis. Yeah, because that was the joke that Michael was spreading hepatitis. Now, did he have hepatitis? It's basically assumed that he didn't, but he was just trying to go for the shock value. Right. Completely irresponsible. I do admit, especially when you have the AIDS epidemic going on. And hepatitis wasn't very well controlled at that point. B and C were still a huge deal. Yeah, it absolutely was. So completely irresponsible, but was his plan to basically spread this around in some sort of bug catching kind of way? I don't think so. I really think he was just trying to shock people. Yeah. And a lot of these things that he did, he was totally sober when it was happening. He was completely sober. And this is one thing that's often misattributed to Michael Alec is that the rampant drug use from the very beginning in his time in New York, a lot of people think that he was just a druggy right off. the bat, but this was not the case. He disliked and resisted using drugs for a very, very long time. He would take them from James, St. James, and others and flush them in front of them. Yeah, he would. Like, he was just very adamantly against drugs, and he just thought you didn't need drugs to be able to party. He thought they got in the way. However, they were constantly being pushed on him. And as drug use grew in the scene, finally, Michael Allen began to partake. And it's hard to say that one person,

turning to drugs is enough to crater the whole scene. But honestly, this is where things started to go downhill in the club scene was when Michael Alex started to take drugs. Yes, because he really was the ringleader of it all. He really was. I mean, some of the drugs they had there, it seemed very innocent in the beginning. So for $15, I think it was, you could get a glass that had, what was it? Mushrooms in it, some vodka.

Yeah, it was like vodka. And champagne. It was vodka, champagne and crushed mushymed. mushrooms in the bottom. Where would you ever go to get something like that? This is unheard of in America, but this happened here. And they had just... And if you're going to do that fine, that's innocent enough. I'm shocked at the wide access to drugs there at the time, especially something like that. It was a really different time back then, though. It really was. I mean, so you probably, if you are at all familiar with club kids, you probably know of their rampant drug use. So

what were they using? They were using special K or ketamine. Ecstasy, Xanax, Ruhypnal, you probably know this is Rufis. As far as I know, not using them to each other, but using on themselves. GHB, which is also both a party drug and a date rape drug. That is true.

Cocaine, meth, they were using meth eventually, and then finally, heroin. DJ Kiyoki in the documentary Glory Days said that a common drug combo, they dubbed Zek, it's an acronym X-E-C-K, it stood for Xanax, ecstasy, cocaine, and ketamine. They would take it all at once. And then soon there were drug dealers all throughout the club, every party.

And Michael would pay to have drugs distributed freely around the club for everyone to use. A lot of these people were on the payroll. Apparently there was a whole corridor in limelight where you could just go pick up whatever you wanted to. And people would just let you sample wares. They'd go around and give a bump to everyone just to keep you up. Yep. It got very interesting because a lot of these drugs here, although dubbed part of, drugs, they're not really good stimulants. I can understand having some mushrooms, having a few drinks,

and having a good time. Xanax, that puts you down. Yeah. K-hole will put you in a K-hole, you'll be laying on the grounds. Yep. It's just foolishness. And then you're mixing it with other things. I think probably the cocaine is what kind of balanced it all out. Probably. Though, I mean, you know, mixing all these things comes at a really great health risk. And I can imagine that there weren't as many overdoses purely because of how young these kids were. But even still. Because fentanyl hadn't come into play now. Probably so.

This could never happen now. But I mean, you even look at speedballs. That was before fentanyl was a thing. And that still put a lot of people down. That killed River Phoenix. Yeah, killed Hillel Slovak from the red hot chili peppers. One of the balusies. I don't know if it's John or Jim.

I'm not sure. But, you know, I'm very shocked there weren't more overdoses. deaths in the club scene, though there were. Gitsy passed away from her own heroin overdose in 1998. That was in the Party Monster Shockumentary, which out of the two Party Monsters, I would watch that one. It's more factual. It's actually just a really good movie. Yeah, it is. Well, it's a documentary. It is a documentary. But the thing is, they kind of run side by side-ish. A lot of the scenes from Party Monster the movie are actual scenes that you will see that are real in Party Monster, the Shockumentary. So if you have a choice,

between the two, just don't bother with Party Monster. Watch the shock you mention. I'll probably talk about this later, but on my rewatch of Party Monster over 10 years later, I was not thrilled with it. But yeah, so as Alex popularity grew in the

club scene, so did his drug use. And he was arrested several times for different drug offenses. And he ended up entering rehab, but continued to use drugs. I believe he was sent to rehab on the request of Peter Gage. It was.

Yeah, that's what I thought. There's a report that he OD'd in a fort made of bed sheets at a hotel party with Peter Gation. Getsy was there as well. Getsy was there as well. Part of the shockumentary. They talk about that a little bit. It's tough to say that Peter Gation didn't know what was going on. He 100% knew what was going on, in my opinion, anyway.

But if you go with your theory that the scene dropped to the minute Alex started doing drugs, it would make sense for Gation to want to send him to rehab. to get him straightened out because that's his bread and butter right there. Absolutely, though. If the theories are true about the drug dealers on Gatian's payroll, he really didn't help matters at all. I mean, he was just really a businessman at the end of the day that casually used himself. And after all of a sudden done, after Allig got out of rehab, he claimed that Gation fired him

immediately. So this really put things on ice for Alec because now, Rueh, Dolf Piper didn't want to book him. Now, Peter Gation wasn't working with him. He really was running out of clubs to book at now. And he started getting lightly blacklisted at a lot of different clubs. He'd show up in bed sheets sometimes. Yeah.

Looking disheveled. If you look at a bunch of pictures of his outfits, they were very glamorous and very thought out. But later, he just showed up looking basically like a stereotypical addict. And it was getting quite sad. Now, some of Alex's behavior could be explained by a personality disorder. He reported being diagnosed with histrionic personality disorder, which is characterized by high levels of attention seeking behavior. He stated, the doctor said I was the most extreme case he ever seen. Everything has to be completely over the top and exaggerated.

It worked well for my job. I was a promoter. And I 100% believe that. Yeah, I agree. I don't think I have ever seen someone more attention seeking and over the top in my entire life. Not that he wouldn't be fun to hang out with, but just the overabundance of flamboyancy and just craziness and just the shocking behavior for the sake of being shocking

is what leads me to believe he probably was absolutely histrionic. Yeah, I completely believe that too. So Andre Angel, as he was known, Melendez, was a regular on the New York City club scene and worked at the limelight amongst other clubs where he sold drugs on the premises. So he was one of the guys in the corridor. hustling drugs.

So after the limelight was closed by federal agents and the investigation found that Gation was allowing drugs to be sold there, Melendez was ultimately fired. Shortly thereafter, he moved into Alex Riverbank West Department, along with a whole bunch of other drug dealers. Basically, he made a bunch of drug dealers his roommate. He had a revolving door of roommates and most of them were drug dealers. And it was theorized that he would have these drug dealer roommates just so that

way he could basically score drugs from them on the cheap or take them without them knowing. On the night of March 17, 1996, Allig and his roommate Robert D. Freeze Riggs killed Melendez after an argument in Alex's apartment over many things, including a longstanding drug debt. It was also reported that comments were made regarding whether or not Angel really was welcome in this scene. This could have thrown fuel on the fire. So allegedly, Freeze Riggs said to Angel that you're not welcome. here you're a poser and everybody thinks this about you and allegedly angel had been self-conscious about this for a while there's a lot of different accounts on who angel was and how he was viewed in

the club scene a lot of people say he was a poser and it's really sad it's very mixed some people said he was a poser and then some people say he was welcome and he was very well liked that's what makes covering this case hard there were so many different varying accounts counts person to person. And the same people will say different things in different documentaries. It's true. As time goes on. You just don't know if these people even are reliable narrators, if they themselves truly remember. And I hate the pose of word. I hate gatekeeping. Yeah, I really don't like that either. Just are you a good person or are you not? But unfortunately, this is a thing with all scenes, all clicks. Regarding killing Angel, Allig claimed many times that he was so high on drugs that his memory of the events is unclear.

But it's interesting because in many interviews, Allig seems to give really clear accounts of the events that happened. And I don't know if he just pieced them out has now told himself a narrative and is rolled with it. But basically, from what I understand, Angel showed up because... Well, when he kind of lived there, and he wanted his money because pretty much, everyone in the house had been just taking his drugs and doing them. I heard they had done about $4,000 worth of drugs. Yeah, there was one account that they just did $4,000 while Angel wasn't there and were like, hey, go get more. And you really can't because if you're a small-time drug dealer, like, I don't know if he was a small-time drug dealer.

He might have been at this point because he no longer was working in the clubs. Right. You basically just have the kind of like in any business, roll over your profits to buy more product. Yeah, exactly. $4,000 if your product is just snorted up or shot up, what are you going to do now? You know, I could understand him being mad, but he showed up there and allegedly he started attacking Michael Allig and trying to strangle him. He slammed Michael's head through this. It was a China cabinet.

Yeah, it was a china cabinet. Yeah, he had glass stuck in his back. Michael Allig did. So at this point, this seems like a real self-defense situation. Freeze was in the other room, allegedly. Michael Allig yelled to him. Freeze ran in, grabbed a hammer, and hit Angel on the head three times, mostly in the back of the head, and Angel fell down. Now, it's not clear whether this killed Angel or not, in my opinion, I think it's very unlikely that this just killed Angel.

No, he was probably knocked out at this point, and at this point, they should have just called the police. Right. This was a self-defense situation. At very least, if you're afraid that you have drugs in the house, lock him out of the house. Right, right. The police don't necessarily have to come in. You can just take the person onto the street and call the cops. Cops would then have to have a warrant to come in. But they were so afraid there were so many drugs in the house that they started doing them all. And what was crazy after this is there's different accounts of this that after Angel went down, Michael Allig grabbed a pillow or a sweatshirt. Accounts change and put it over his face. But then it gets weirder from there. he allegedly took Drano and put it in Angel's mouth and then put duct tape over his mouth. I think this is what killed him. I do as well. Was the Drano.

They just left him like that. More than likely they did that and he probably wasn't poisoned but probably aspirated it. Yeah, that's what I guess happened to. There were some accounts of a broken syringe on the ground where they were allegedly trying to shoot him up with Drano. But they do say that it was a fabrication and a dramatization for. the movie party monster. Yeah, I've not heard one account that that's what happened. I did in one of the documentaries, Michael Musto said it, but I think he made a mistake there. Oh, did he? Yeah, I think it was just a mistake. A lot of these people just get everything confused now because there's so many

variations. Yeah. So after Melendez's death, Allegan Riggs didn't know what to do with the body. They initially left it in the bathtub, which they filled with ice. And then they left and went partying at somebody else's house. And it was weird because Michael Allig talks about how, oh, he'll just wake up again. Well, why did you put the body on ice then? Like, why would you put this on ice if you thought he was just going to wake up? And they had hoped that they'd come home and he just wouldn't be there anymore. This is all from Michael Alex accounts. Robert Riggs has not ever given an interview. And the sad thing about Riggs is he actually was a very smart person. I think he got into the club scene to get some quick money. He was a habitasher before that, which is a hatmaker. And he's a very educated man. He has his Ph.D. now. I believe. He was out before Michael Allig was, which is interesting considering that people could argue that Frie was the one that killed Angel. But regardless, after a few days, the body began to decompose and it began to smell really bad. James St. James talks about he'd come over there and see Michael and party and do drugs and he'd be like, what's that smell? And Michael would just be like, oh, it's the pipes. And

you'd just be like, oh, okay. And I believe that. I'd believe it too. So after discussing, what to do with Melendez's body and who should do it, Riggs went to Macy's to buy two chef's knives and a meat cleaver. By his own admission, Michael Allig agreed to dismember Angel's body in exchange for 10 bags of heroin from Riggs. He cut Angel's legs off and put them in a separate garbage bag, then into separate duffel bags, and threw them into the Hudson River, though other accounts claims that the legs went out with the trash. The rest of the body was put into a large box Riggs found in the basement of their apartment. and they kept it in their living room in full view of guests.

I can't remember who it was, but somebody said they went over and they were using it as like a footrest. They sit on the couch and they had their feet up on the box. And Michael Allig would say things like, hey, you know where Angel is? You know where Angel? Have you seen Angel lately? And he had his shoes on. Yeah, that's true. He had taken Angel's platform shoes off and was wearing them around. Yeah, you know whose shoes these are? Do you know where I got these?

Things like that. Very ridiculous. And then after that, him and Riggs threw the box into the Hudson River with a help of a cabby that they paid $20 to help throw in. The cabby never said anything. You just asked him, what's in here? It's just stuff we don't want anymore. And he's just like, give me $20. And it's like, okay.

They claimed there was dishes in there. They didn't want to put in a dumpster. But the dumb thing was is they didn't put any holes in the box. So it didn't sink. It just floated away. And what was interesting is that people theorized that this could have floated. it out to see pretty easily, but it didn't because some rainstorms and wind. There's a tropical storm. Yeah, and that was basically keeping it in the bay. So, and people might be thinking, well, why did you

throw this in the Hudson River? Well, the Hudson River is very criminally polluted. People would throw things into the Hudson all the time back then. So people throwing things in the Hudson, yes, sketchy, but unfortunately, not uncommon. And still, it's still a problem. It's been cleaned up nowadays, from my understanding. It's not as bad as it was, but it's obviously still a problem. It's probably always going to be a problem. So in the weeks following Melendez's disappearance, Alec told anybody that would listen to him that he and Riggs had killed him. It became a joke at some point. Yes. They literally told everybody. So most people didn't believe Alic and thought that this confession was a plot to get attention. And I totally see why. So Michael Mostow,

who we've talked about a few times here, he's a journalist for the village. voice and he was known very well for covering nightlife in New York City and specifically the club kids. He recalled that by the time Alex sent out a party invite joking about the murder, a lot of people actually wanted to kill him because a source started talking about this being more of a premeditated version. Yeah, so let's kind of back up a little bit. At first, a lot of people thought, well, why would Michael have killed him? Michael wouldn't hurt anybody. He's this tiny person. He doesn't seem to be very homicidal, he's just a joker, and now he's out here telling people, this doesn't make any sense. And so what they thought was happening is that Michael paid Angel to disappear as some type of joke

to basically fake his own death. And people weren't going to be had by it because it seemed like exactly something Michael would do. When it started to turn around, people were like, okay, maybe this is real is when Angel's family started coming out of the woodwork looking for him. There's no way that Angel would do this to his family. And then it went even first. There was an account that there was a fourth person in that room that witnessed this and that it was premeditated. And this was brought to police. However, we don't know what happened with this account. It's mentioned, but clearly it wasn't admissible into evidence for some reason.

And there's a couple theories. They haven't named who that person was either. No, they didn't name who this person was. So either the police found that this was not a credible accusation or it had something to do. with the police wanting to get Peter Gation on drug and racketeering charges, which we will talk about later. Another big red flag in the scene

was the fact that the year prior, Michael Allig threw his big blood feast party. And on the flyer, it had a picture of him with his skull off and his brain exposed, with someone hitting him with a hammer. Yes. And there was a verbiage on the fly

that said, legs cut off. Yeah. It's very unfortunate. Coincidence. Now, people have said, I think it was mostly James St. James, said that Michael Allig was obsessed with old horror movies. As am I, a lot of the ones that were referenced, especially Blood Feast, I have copies of. Yeah, which I wasn't familiar with this stuff, but we can get into theories if Michael Allig is a murderous, evil person or not later on or what this is. but it should be noted that these things did happen, and Michael Alec did have an interest in this.

So after all of this kind of came out, Michael Allig fled NYC. He went and stayed not with his family, but in his old hometown of South Bend, Indiana for a bit, and then stayed for a period of time in Chicago and Denver, Colorado, before returning. I believe during that time, he had a bunch of heroin on him and ran out on the way there

and then started withdrawing on the way back to New York City. I do believe even when he was in Denver and in South Bend, he called his mom specifically because he was withdrawing so badly that he either needed some sort of treatment or heroin immediately. And she put him in a methadone program. Yeah. I remember she said that she hadn't seen her son in years and she wanted to hug him,

but he just couldn't stand the feeling of touch on his body that he just couldn't hug her. And it sounded very sad, really. Like, he was basically begging her for help by her own admission. And, yeah, she checked him into a methadone clinic, and then he went back to New York City. So on April 26, 1996, Moosto reported rumors of Alex's involvement in Angel's death in a blind item. So if you don't know what that is, it's just basically like a gossip column where you're not naming names so you don't get sued. So this came out in Village Voice.

So although no names were used, Mostow's reports included the details of the murder. and Muso had previously reported on Alex firing from the limelight and noted the buzz about a missing person from the club scene. Now, the following day, the New York Post is page six column, which does a lot of nightlife and social type of writing. They ran a column about the murder mystery, and they cited Muso's reportings as well as a New York magazine piece quoting an evasive Alec.

So they were already reporting that Alec was running from New York City that things were going on in the club scene and that Angel was missing, even though they weren't using names, they were kind of bouncing off one another. And it was creating quite a buzz. Yeah, and everybody had already remembered Michael Alex talking about killing Angel, Angel disappearing. So this, of course, really, really tipped people off. So over the coming weeks, the Village Voice continued to report and make accusations about Angel's murder. And by this point, children playing in the water, pulled a box containing a legless torso from the waters,

of Oakwood Beach at Miller Field, which was in Newdorp, Staten Island. Now, at the time, the police had no idea the body was Angel Melendez. The investigator said in an interview that they had very little to go on and thought this was going to be cold case. They actually believed the body was from Cuba or was dumped overboard by an Asian freight liner. Yeah, they were sitting there going crazy in Chinatown trying to figure out if it was somebody who was missing there. Yeah.

For the longest time. Yeah. And so how they connected it was actually. the article in the Village Voice and the New York Post. So once they saw this, they were able to put things together, especially when they read what the cause of death was, you know, blunt force trauma to the back of the head and they looked to the body. He was like, hey, this actually matches up.

Missing legs. And then they ran the dental records and they were able to confirm it was Angel Melendez. So at this time, the police had still not questioned Alig about the murder because they really just wanted Peter Gation. I think if this happened nowadays, this would be a first-degree murder. charge right out the gate. But they were just so hesitant because I tried to find more information on this. This was tough to find information on. Rudy Giuliani became mayor. Rudy Giuliani knew about Mayor Duncan's reputation for not cleaning up the city. So he won his campaign on the

premise of that he was going to clean up the city and make New York City safe. And to do this, he had to basically make a big show of it for people to see. this. And one of his targets were nightclubs, specifically Peter Gation, because he was aware about all the drug use that was going on in all of these clubs. I think eventually they got Peter Gation on tax evasion. He did. And he is basically exiled to Canada now. But they wanted to get him on drug charges, racketeering charges, I believe some other things. I can only assume that this want to get Gation that badly was enough to not indebted. Mike Michael Allig on murder charges, which is just so ridiculous when I say it out loud,

but it's the only thing that seems to make sense. After the body was identified, Allig fled New York almost immediately, and he was soon located by police in a motel room, rented by his drug dealer boyfriend named Brian in Tom's River, New Jersey. He was arrested, as was Riggs, and shortly after his arrest, Riggs confessed the following to police, and I quote, On a Sunday in March of 1996, I was at home, and Michael Allig and Angel Melendez were loudly arguing. Some of this is truncated, so it naturally skips around.

This was the quote that was given to me. I opened the room and started towards the other bedroom, at which point Michael Allig was yelling, help me, get him off me. Angel started shaking him violently and banging him against the wall. He was yelling, you better get my money or I'll break your neck. I grabbed the hammer and hit Angel over the head, end quote. So according to Riggs, he hit Melendez a total of three times on the head with a hammer. Then Aligh grabbed a pillow and tried to smother him.

While Melendez was unconscious, Riggs went to the other room, and when he returned, he noticed the broken syringe on the floor. Riggs claimed that Allig was pouring some cleaner or chemical, which we now know to be the Drano, into Melendez's mouth, and then duct taped it with the help of Riggs. Alec has disputed these claims, however, and again, cited that the Drano in the hypodermic needle as one of the key false dramatizations in Disco Bloodbath, which was written by Jane St. James and Party Monster, which was the subsequent movie related to the novel. Yeah, it was based off of Disco Bloodbath, for my understanding. So, Allig claimed he killed Melendez in self-defense and helped to dispose of the body in a panic. Prosecutors were hesitant to charge him with first-degree murder, as they still hoped he would testify

against his former boss Peter Gation, who had been arrested for allowing drugs to be sold in his nightclubs. From what I understand, Aleg was supposed to be the key witness against Peter Gation, and then he decided not to. And you would think at this point

that he would just be charged with murder now that there was no use of Michael Allig for the police in the convicting of Gation, but regardless, they offered both Aleg and Riggs a plea deal. If they pled guilty to manslaughter, they would get a sentence of 10 to 20 years. And so they took it. On October 1st, 1997, both were pleaded guilty and got 10 to 20.

Again, we talked about Riggs. He got out a lot earlier than Michael Alec did. I think he got out before 2010, but I'm not 100% sure on that. There's not a ton of information on him, except for his work that he does in colleges now. Alec is a different story. So he was transferred to different prisons. He spent time in a psych ward at Rikers Island.

In 2000 at Southport Correctional Facility, he was placed in solitary confinement after he was caught using heroin. He remained in solitary for another two and a half years after he kept returning positive drug tests. So that right there, ladies and gentlemen, is a problem with your staff. Yes, especially if you're getting drugs in solitary. Now, I don't know what New York prison system's like.

I've heard many stories about the California prison. system, but I'm not going to go into it. Michael Allig also claims that he was assaulted many times. And he probably was unfortunately. He probably was very small man. It's effeminate. People probably might have known who he was. And also, if you think about it, if he went into prison with the type of attitude he was

keeping on the outside, no one was going to tolerate that. Yeah, he was going to get checked, especially if he's in general population, which he was for a period of time. So in August 2004, Alex's longtime friend and mentor, I think they were more. for enemies. For enemies. James St. James began a blog entitled phone calls from a felon. The blog contains transcripts of phone conversations between Allig and St. James about Alex's prison experiences. After six weeks, Alec put a stop to the phone calls claiming, quote, people think I'm having a grand old time or that I'm trying to exploit my situation. He was moved to Elmira

Correctional Facility later that year. And it just should be noted James St. James in general. He talks about how he was the king of the club kids and then Allig came around and he thought that he was done for when Alec showed up on the scene. He did not seem to really like Alec. And just how they talk to each other and how James St. James talks about him, he always seemed like there was a rivalry in that they were just frenemies. I have this whole different feeling on the situation. I really hope James St. James doesn't come across our podcast one day and just read us for

trash. But for me, he really feels like an aging, trust fund baby, trying to stay relevance. And at the same time, he is trying to attach himself to the coattails of Michael Allig, who basically came from nothing and created so much amazing energy. Even though it was extremely problematic, it really just felt like he was trying to ride the coattails. And even while in prison was still trying to do that to stay relevant. Yeah. To the point where he was exploiting Allig.

And I think after he got out of prison, he was still doing this in different forms of media, like that World of Wonder special he was doing where they're basically following him around on parole. I feel, and then he was trying to get him back into the club scene. Yeah, it should be... I think he's the reason that he, you know, eventually went back to drugs. I mean, we'll get back to that later. I'm sorry.

That's an assumption. I mean, allegedly, we don't have any fact on this. We don't. But it should be mentioned that people have said that James St. James did that World of Wonder thing, but he never visited Michael Allig in prison. A bunch of other people did. They said they would drive six hours. round trip just to visit him in prison for a short period of time. And it just feels like he's just trying to make some coin off of him.

And I'm sorry if that's not the case, but this is just what it reads to me. Regarding James St. James, I think it should be mentioned that he probably did a lot for the club scene in the beginning. He definitely helped build this. However, it seemed like he did become less relevant. And then when all this happened and the club scene went away, he had to find something to do here. I mean, he wrote Disco Bloodbath.

It just seems like everything he's done is to just try to gain what little relevance and monetary compensation he can get off of this. I don't know what he does nowadays. He makes different appearances and stuff with LGBT-type programs. He's been on, I believe, Rupal's Drag Race. He does stuff still on World of Wonder. When we briefly got that subscription for a day so that we could watch Party Monsters, the shockumentary. There was tons of stuff with him on there. It was some show called transformation. I don't know. I didn't delve deep into everything that was there on this subscription program for a $1.99 that I canceled.

I believe he does have a YouTube channel. He has reunited with Michael Allig and Ernie Glam, which we'll get into later. But first, Allig became eligible for parole in 2006. However, this was denied immediately, reportedly after parole officers watched the film Party Monster, which was basically fictionalized. So it's kind of sad that if he was denied parole solely off that reason. After failing several drug tests, he was again denied parole in July of 2008. And in March of 2009, Alec claimed he finally decided to stop using drugs and that he had been sober since then. So Alec was paroled on May 5th of 2014. And per the conditions of the parole, he was supposed to return to New York City, which was terrible. This is a terrible thing to do for someone who was an addict where they know to get all their drugs in New York.

York City. This is a terrible idea. Not to mention it's gotten more expensive cost of living is higher and he has no job skills. How is he supposed to survive? And the culture shock. So he was required to abide by an 8 p.m. curfew. He needs to go do drug counseling, anger management counseling and a job readiness training, which I don't know what that's going to do for you when you have that much of a gap. Anyway. No, remember, he had never using the internet. He's never had a cell phone. He had to be shown how to use one. He'd be shown how to text. And it was still a giant. adjustment for him. Right. Rather than just ending a call, he kept shutting his phone off. Yeah. So people couldn't get a hold of him. So in the months following his release, he was granted numerous interviews in which she expressed a desire to star in his own reality TV show and also stage an exhibition of his artwork, which was pretty good stuff. Yeah. He was pretty talented. You have to understand he went to a design school after Fordham. So he had other talents. And all those different flyers he put together, he was very artistically inclined. He made them. himself. On September 7th of 2014, Allegan Fellow Club Kid Ernie Glam began hosting a YouTube

comedy talk show titled The Pew after The View. So this went on for a while, I think until 2018, where Ernie left. And it was kind of Michael for then, but it became less frequent of episodes when it was just Michael. I mean, it wasn't a polished product anyway, but at least was entertaining and good. Yeah, it was. The sound quality was, it was tough. It was tough because, like, we watched a few of them to try to get some information on what had happened. But it was really hard to discern some things. I think that's mostly because of Michael Allig. Even watching some of these, it seemed like he was close to nodding off. A lot of people mentioned that in the comments that he seemed like he was close to nodding off. He seemed kind of all over the place. A lot of people alleged he was still using at that period. of time. Ernie Glam mentioned this and his final goodbye to Michael Allig. And he just wasn't technologically advanced enough to handle something like this. A lot of times he was recording video from what was clearly the camera in his laptop. Yeah. So he was looking all over the place. Sound quality wasn't quite there. But overall, it was still something kind of

fun to watch. Yeah. I think painted trash is a much better version of the pew. It is. So if you haven't, you know, we talk about them quite a bit. Our friends over at Painted Trash. I hope Mark and Casey know who we're talking about right now. Like, with they're familiar with these club kids. But, okay, so on February 2nd, 2017, Allig was arrested for trespassing and smoking crystal meth in Joyce Kilmer Park in Concourse,

which is outside the Bronx Supreme Court at around 1.30 a.m. So if this wasn't clear what I just said, he was smoking crystal meth outside of the Bronx Supreme Court while on parole. The complaint alleges that police found a ballot. of crystal meth in a pipe with residue from the drug in his jacket pocket. The New York Daily News reported that Allig was arraigned on drug possession and trespass charges and pled guilty to trespassing in exchange for a conditional discharge. So very sadly this year on Christmas, I happened to open up my phone and found out that

Allig was found unconscious by his ex-boyfriend at their Washington Heights home in Manhattan. He was using heroin before he. He fell ill and was pronounced dead at this scene and he was 54 years old. So this is sad for, you know, additional reasons. A lot of overdoses and suicides take place on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. This is way more common than you think. And was he intentionally trying to kill himself? I guess we'll never know.

There wasn't a note found from my understanding. But this is obviously a real painful time and people turn to drugs at this point. Just think about it, though. You have this person who was incarcerated for almost two decades, who is now incarcerated yet again in his home. Whether or not you feel that Michael Allig deserve this or not, I just hate to see this culture of overdoses and suicide around the holidays. And I can understand why people do it. But it just makes me sad. And I just, I want this to change somehow. And I just don't know.

It's such a complicated issue to fix. but anytime I see this, it makes me sad. Some of his friends alleged he'd been using drugs for the past few years, specifically heroin. I mentioned a lot of his videos, show him nodding off and speaking funny. Ernie Glam hinted at this and mentioned about Michael's addiction and how he really tried to do his best for Michael, but at the end of things, he had to cut himself off so that way Michael wouldn't bring him down. and, you know, I don't blame Ernie in this at all. I think Ernie really tried his best.

I like Ernie Glam. He invited him to live in his apartment after he was released from prison with him and his husband. Yeah, and try to help Michael get a job. He really did what he could. He really did. It's not surprising, though, that he passed because think about it, you're away for so long. You have a huge culture shock. So much has changed since he went away to prison.

He's now thrown back into New York City, and it's a completely different place. There's no job prospects unless he's going to be a content creator again. Like honestly, nobody's going to hire somebody who, one, is an addict, two, has a manslaughter charge and has this notorious reputation behind them unless you're making your own content. And if he's going to get back into drugs, drugs are completely different now than they were back then. First off, fentanyl is laced into literally everything. He had, you know, six years to kind of figure that out. But things have changed even more with the pandemic. A lot of the things that you would mix into drugs aren't getting into them because of the supply chain, so you're getting more and more

deadly drugs. Yeah, it's true. Because people are just throwing these cocktails together. And it's not what he could handle as a man in his 20s. He's now in his 50s doing the same thing. Not to mention quite often, this is a problem that many former inmates face to get out of prison and there's just no job prospects for them. It seems like the only thing they can do is go back into prison, whether they turn to a life

of crime or just get themselves arrested to be in prison again. Kind of like that gentleman did Albert Fleck here in town. Yep, that definitely was a thing for sure. So besides this, a lot of people talk about, you know, was Michael Allig evil? Was he a sociopath? And Michael Allig even mentions this himself. And so does James St. James, that when you're really in the throes of addiction, you have traits that mimic that of a sociopath. I really try to think about, well, who was Michael Allig before he got into the drug addiction?

because when he was an addict, I think this really warped him and understandably so. But I can't definitively say heads or tails if he's evil or if he was a sociopath or if it was just a perfect storm. I think it's a perfect storm and he definitely had a personality disorder. I don't think it's him being a sociopath. I think histrionic is absolutely the correct diagnosis. I don't believe that there was any accounts ever of Michael Allig being a violent person. And I think that's what would tip me off if this was some sort of premeditated murder. Now, could he have done this as some sort of thrill-seeking, possibly?

Could he have done it just to get out of a drug debt, possibly? My thought, and I think we discussed this a couple of days ago, is if he definitely had histrionic personality disorder, and he was definitely someone who was going to push everything to the limit, then maybe, just maybe he saw an opportunity to commit a murder, per se or manslaughter to kill a person and took it because the opportunity was there and why not it's quite possible some of these things could have been crime of opportunity it's really hard to say and we don't know if this was premeditated the account that the fourth person was in the the room i mean

that testimony was ignored they wanted peter gation i think if it wasn't for peter gation if it wasn't for history coming together at this perfect moment with rudy juliani trying to clean up the town I don't think Michael Allig would ever been released from prison. I think he would have done life. One could also argue if it weren't for Rudy Giuliani, there's possibilities that the clubs wouldn't have been shut down and it wouldn't have happened. Right. That's also possible. It's hard to say. Would Michael Allig have been fired by Peter Gation eventually and he would have gotten desperate, probably? I think there's still a likelihood that Michael Allig still has some sort of hand in the killing of Angel Malagian.

And I will say, I forgot to mention this earlier, something that Ernie Glam said in his final goodbye to Michael is he said that if you're a friend or family of Angel and you haven't forgiven Michael or if you still hold ill will to Michael, I hope that his death offers closure for you. And I thought that was a very mature thing to say because with something like this is complicated. And when Michael got out of prison, he was basically welcome back with open arms. There's a ton of interviews and videos I've seen of him reuniting with DJ Kiyoki, reuniting with Jane St. James, reuniting with other club kids. He wasn't as shunned as you thought he would be. However, I'm sure there's people that were, and I'm sure there's people that look at this kind of mix, that they liked Michael, they didn't agree with what he did, and maybe that his death can offer closure to people that felt they didn't have closure through the death of angel. And honestly, I hope that too.

I really hope that those people can get closure out of Michael Alex's death, that this can offer something positive to them. I agree. So should we get into Party Monster now and why it is terrible? I'll touch on it very quickly. So when I first saw Party Monster, I didn't really know who these club kids were. I think I may have saw something on Geraldo a long time ago. I had to have been very young at the time. And when I saw Party Monster, I was like, wow, this is awesome.

I wish I got to go to clubs like this. And I became very interested in that whole scene as a point in history. Now, flash forward 12 years later, I watched it again with Yergy. And we had to shut it off after 45 minutes because it was so bad. Macaulay Culkin is a horrible actor. And it didn't feel like McCauley Culkin was playing Michael Allig. It felt like McCauley Culkin was playing McCauley Culkin. And Seth Green did a fair job with Jane.

St. James. Michael Allig even says that he wasn't like the best fan of McCauley Calkins acting. But he didn't have very long to get his mannerisms down. He visited him in prison, had a very short window of opportunity to try to kind of figure out who Michael Alick was and then had to put his own spin on it. Yeah, it's true. So can we forgive McCauley Calkin for that? I mean, sure, but I swear every time I see McCauley Calkin, it's the same role, same person, same everything. It's just weird. It comes across as, even though you have a-ish list actors in the film, it comes across a really low budget. It really does. It feels like just a B movie. You forget that these are A-list actors. I mean, it kind of is a B movie. It was put on by World of Wonder.

Oh, was it? Yeah. Okay. And then, all right. That makes some sense. In my opinion, if you want to know more about this, watch the documentaries. There's Glory Days, Life in Times of Michael Allig and there's Party Monster, the Shocumentary. These are good. These are interesting. There is stuff on YouTube. You can watch his appearances on Geraldo. There's a ton of footage of other things, other accounts. There's also the limelight, but it was made by Peter Gation's daughter, and we couldn't find it. Yeah. We weren't going to go pay a bunch of money for movies. I really wanted to find more about Peter Gation, but there's a lot that's just not there, and there was limelight, but I knew that if I watched the limelight, it would just,

be a lot of stuff from his family and it's like how far could I take this to credit. I just don't know. So we just didn't pursue it any further. But that's there if you want to watch that. A lot of people talked about Peter Gation as this conniving, slimy, evil person. But a lot of people talk to him as this good businessman that just wanted to make money and wasn't really out to get anybody or out to screw anyone over. It's kind of mixed. I don't really have any opinion here or there. I don't really have any opinion here or there. on this. I think that he was sought after by the state of New York because they wanted to make a show of it and show

that they could bring down people like this in an effort to clean up the city. And then, I guess the last thing is, this is a very hard episode to do. This is a very hard episode to research. You could find stuff on it and just go on that. But a lot of information

has caveats. If you look up Wikipedia, all that information has caveats. Oh, also, there's this. And then there's this. And some people say this and this kind of conflicts this and that. Right. And back to what I was saying at the beginning here, if you watch all of these documentaries and then do your own

research and then check out some Pew episodes, you have the same people giving different takes on the same thing at different time periods. One thing we had spoke about earlier is whether or not Angel was a poser, and again, I hate that word. Or a good person. Or a good

person. So we have Michael at one point, as well as Kiyoki and Jane St. James. He is imposer. You know, nobody liked him. But then later we have, and I believe it was Glory Days, Michael's saying he was a good person. And I hope, and I hope his family knows he was accepted. Yeah, it's like, okay, is this real? And then some of the more accessory club kids gave very, very different accounts. Some say that he was a scary person. Some people say he was sweet and kind. One person, I can't remember who it was. When is so far as to saying he

deserved to die because he was just such an evil person, I guess. This is probably the most divided accounts I've ever gotten of a person. And usually when somebody dies in such a manner like this, people are more likely to shift towards same positive things about the person. But the accounts just differed so much. I don't know why there were so many different accounts. I don't know why there was such a confliction. This makes it very hard to tell the story. I don't know if there are many different clicks within the click. It's possible. It's very possible. I really don't know. And also, if let's just say you're not a customer of angels, you're not owing him a drug debt, you're going to get a very different angel. Quite possibly, whether you knew Angel as a club kid or you knew Angel as a customer,

that's a big difference. And Robert Riggs, there's not a whole lot of information on him either. There's very few pictures of him, too. I mean, he looked kind of sinister in his old pictures, but. But the now pictures, very straight and narrow. Yeah, there's just questions we're never going to have answers to. And I kind of just have to accept that for what it is. This is a point in history where you just kind of have to take it at, I don't want to say at face value, but. You just have to accept it for the story that is. We had a very interesting conversation in Discord the other day.

And one of our new members said, if you could take a time machine into a place in history, where would you want to go? And that could be a lot of different places. I believe it was fancy, Cuba. It was Fancy Cuber. Shout out's Fancy Cuber. So that could be a lot of different places to me, but because it was so topical, I really feel like I wish I was the appropriate age to enjoy this and or just be a fly on the wall. Just to see this happening. I would have liked to do that as well.

However, I would have liked to be there during the early days during the outlaw parties. Yes. When it got super drugged out. No, no, no, no. That's just not really interesting to me. But if you want to go even further, I would have loved to see Studio 54. I would have love to go to things like CBGBs. And to go even further into the punk scene, I would love to go see a show at ABC,

no Rio to go to whatever that squat is that leftover crack operated out of. There's so many different places. I would have loved to go to Lamor, which no longer exists. There's so much history in New York City, so much musical history, so much culture. The factory. The factory, yes, they just aren't there anymore. Even if I go mid-2000s venues like Arlene's grocery that had so many great shows that I'll never get to experience.

I mean, hell, the limelight's a pizza joint now. I'd still go. Yeah. The pizzas look delicious, but, you know. I remember hearing when Interpol still had Carlos D in it, there was just a big lower east side Manhattan party scene. I would have loved to see that. When I was in Seattle, I was briefly in a band with somebody that lived in New York during that period of time and had so many stories of what had happened then. And there's something to living in a big city, you catch things.

that are around for such a very short period of time. There was a very interesting time. Back when I was in middle school, I, and I don't remember how this all started. It might have been with my GeoCities or Angel Fire website and some web rings I had belonged to. There were a group of girls that made a zine, and I also made a zine, and we would trade them.

But they all lived in Brooklyn, and they were constantly going to shows over at Coney Island High, and the lunatic chicks would play, and they'd do reviews on it, and they'd get to see the voluptuous horror of Karen Blank, And it was just like this whole exciting world in the early to mid-90s that I was living through these girls who are my age through zeroed copies of the zine they had. They were called the poor children.

That was the name of the zine. It was these four girls. And people would just send them all over the country, all over the world. Specifically, if you're in a rural place or if you don't have access to these things, you were able to now live vicariously through somebody. I got into this, unfortunately, a little too late. I was in a touring punk band. I would go to these places.

People had merch booths set up, and there would be all these zines. And I just never got to get into it. If this is something I got into in high school, early high school or middle school, I bet I would have been way more into it. Instead, I got into chat rooms. I got into GeoCity's pages than MySpace. And I network through then. And I still say that MySpace was the best form of networking to have ever exist.

for this sort of thing. I don't think anything has come along since then. That is as great for networking, in my opinion. And I know some people are going to completely disagree with that, but I just don't know if they really operated during that period of time like I did. I think there are some platforms nowadays that offer you more in certain areas, not trying to be vague, but I just don't have a whole lot of examples right now. But as far as networking in the purest sense, I feel like MySpace was the best thing for that. Because you had a reach. I could become friends with somebody who was famous. And it wasn't you were just liking their page. There was a bit of connection there. I'd say probably the closest thing now where you have that type of reach is probably unfortunately Twitter. Yeah.

Unfortunately, these things have algorithms now. Right. There did not used to be algorithms. Now AI is kind of ruining these things. But what type of piece of social media can you quite literally start a band, make your own band page and become famous? simply on MySpace. Yeah.

And there were many MySpace famous bands. Bands that I still have like their entire discography on my playlist that have since broken up. Bands that were able to book world tours off MySpace alone

and then after MySpace died, they kind of fizzled out. I hope somebody covers this somehow in history and keeps some sort of record of it. The problem is that MySpace has purged. A lot of music purged. Posts, messages,

all these things are lost. So I don't. think that many people thought to record all of these things until they realized it was too late. So this might be something that becomes lost in history. It could be its own example of just a time in history where we have to kind of take it for what it is. Yeah, and just go on other people's accounts. I mean, I was even lightly, locally, MySpace famous at the time.

Were you? I was. People would recognize me and be like, hey, you're just from MySpace just when I was out and about. Yeah. It was kind of weird. And basically all I did was I was very big in the local LGBT nightlife community. And I kind of made my mark as I had a pretty decent camera at the time that was given to me.

And I would take pictures at drag shows. And then I would post them and then people would take them and put me on their top eight. And people knew who I was. Photographers in the music scene, I can say, were very popular. And all you had to do was just take pictures of kids in the pit, take pictures of bands. And you would get in wherever you wanted to. as long as your camera was good and you're willing to do certain things like this. You got your name out there for sure.

And there's a couple photographers I can think of off the top of my head that are still operating lucrative businesses out of Portland, Maine. And they got their start just taking pictures like that during the Myspace era. But all right, we've gone on for a very long time. If you've been listening this far, I appreciate you. This will come out on the fourth, I think. basically 2021. So happy new year. Happy New Year. We had a really great new year last night, I feel.

Yeah, I felt we did too. It was enjoyable. It was dev. We got to play some games with some friends. I have a lot of fun. It was very needed. It's been a stressful time of year. It's been a stressful year, but especially this time of year has been very stressful. And having you guys here has made it all the better. And I appreciate all of you for that. If you've been listening on YouTube, please hit like and subscribe. I'm going to just touch on this. Maybe I'll make a video eventually. It needs to be touched on. YouTube is shadow banning some of our videos and we were very high up in the algorithm. One of our videos was about to go viral and then they took it and crushed it all because we requested a monetization review. Very few of our videos were

monetized and I thought, you know, maybe there's a off chance I could get, it was a Sylvia Lykens video, this one monetized and we could get just like a little bit of money to pay for our hosting fees. but this cost us hundreds of maybe even thousands of subscribers so we're kind of back to square one with this we're only getting single to low double digit subscribers a day what you can do for us is share videos hit subscribe and hit the bell notification this helps so much if you leave a comment this also helps a lot we need to get rebuilt back in the youtube algorithm and you know i hate to operate with a company that i despise so much i don't respect at all that I feel is hurting.

They're hurting a lot of low content creators. And I would rather go to another platform, but I understand that this is a very accessible platform. It's a platform that I chose to use for so long. And I basically learned about just how awful YouTube is to its creators after being a creator myself. So what can you do for us basically try to get us back up in the algorithm, share videos, get our podcast around word of mouth?

This helps us so much. And if for some reason, YouTube gets rid of our channel, cancels our channel, we would hopefully be able to go to another platform and not be finished as a podcast. But we don't plan to give up at all. And we're not going to give up on you. So if you could do this for us, it means a whole lot. If you want to go that extra step and contribute to our Patreon and chip in, you don't have to, but I would greatly appreciate it.

You will get access to all of our secret content. all of our check-ins, all of our episodes, all of our old episodes that we've since taken off of YouTube and all streaming platforms are only available there now. The classic Drewby and Yergy episodes only available there. You get access to our secret discord channels, our Snapchat groups, depending on the tier that you choose on Patreon. So there is a lot of value there. And, of course, it helps keep us going.

Absolutely. So let's thank our patrons. By the way, patreon.com slash the misery machine, if I didn't say that earlier. And if you want a sticker, PayPal.m.m.E. slash the misery machine. We still have lots of them. They're great in the winter weather. Yes. It still hasn't peeled it all off of my car, which I'm really happy about. I'm very glad I spent the extra money to get those very good stickers. So without further ado, we are going to thank Eddie, Rowan, Marky, Holly, Ashley, Voo, Anna, Serena, Chloe, Mark, Tara, Sophie, Karen with an EA, Neil and Karen, Dave and Karina, Levi, Levi, Levi, we love you. And welcome Madison. And welcome Madison. Yes. Thank you for She's been binging some of our older stuff on Patreon. So I really appreciate that.

Yes, I would appreciate you, Madison. And Levi, Levi, let's put up his beautiful picture right now. Levi, our highest tier, Patreon supporter. He's really just lovely. He's just a beautiful person. Yes, he very much is. We should play among us again soon, Levi. I just can't wait for COVID to go away because Levi and I used to just have the greatest time. We'd go on these lunch dates. We'd go get time. We just go places and I miss that so much. It has been almost a year now since I've seen him in person.

It's crazy. Some of these patrons are people who I've known in real life, Neil and Karen, Dave and Karina, it's been years since I've seen them. I think the last time I saw Neil and Karen was Christmas of last year. And there's so many people I have not seen face to face this year and hopefully 2021 can change that. Serena, I haven't seen since high school. Holly, we did a special drive-by to wave to her at her apartment. because she doesn't she lives about an hour away yeah and we have some patrons in main that we've yet to

actually meet that i would love to meet markey yeah marky especially i mean i remember markey from the club scene long long long ago but we didn't know each other then yeah and then of course we get to go to wisconsin hopefully and see eddie once us all clears up misery con 2021 yes hopefully we will eventually have our own misery machine convention when i'm not sure but it's going to to happen. It will happen. Okay. So anyways, before we go, if you want to just hang out with us, doesn't cost you any money. Just join our Discord. It's in the descriptions below. We've been having a lot of video hangouts lately. We've been having video hangouts lately. We need more. Yes. Because they're fun. Yes. So if you're feeling alone or you're not having enough

interaction, you want to hang out with a cool group of people, join our Discord. We'd love to have you. We had a really great Christmas hang out. I loved it. had a Christmas hangout, a big Christmas hangout. I was so happy to hold that for people that were either alone on Christmas or with people they didn't want to be with on Christmas. I know what those things are like. Quite honestly, it was probably one of the best Christmases I've had in a very long time. Yeah, I'm not kidding. That was one of the best Christmases I have ever had. And I just was filled with such a sense of purpose. Doing this podcast and building this community gives me purpose for a couple of reasons. You know, one, obviously, bringing attention to these cases, bringing attention to missing person's cases, hopefully doing our part to help solve these.

But then also building the community, giving people a community like this fills me with so much purpose. I mean, I need it. I need it badly. Yeah, I need it too. And I'm glad that we were able to do this because it's been so helpful just for us alone. And I hope it's been helpful for all of you that participated. So if you want part of that, please, we would love to have you. But until next week, I don't know what our next week. episode's going to be. I don't know. We have a bunch of suggestions. We'll have to go through

them together. Yeah, we'll have to discuss, but we love you. We love you. Bye. Bye-bye.