It was Friday, October 6, 1988.

The previous night, the sleazy DJ service slotted me into a new bar – a Chi-Chi’s on Brooklyn Boulevard at Regent, stuck amid a bunch of car dealerships and apartment buildings.

There were maybe a dozen people in the room – not horrible for a Thursday at a crappy bar, really.  Five of them sat at a table next to the booth – three rough-looking guys and a couple of very drunk twentysomething girls. They were in the mood to dance, anyway.

It was around 9:30, and the five of them were on the floor, lurching clumsily about.  One of the women – whose birthday party the evening was, as it turned out – was shrieking loudly, a little too happy.  It all seemed pretty harmless.  I turned away from the floor to pick my next record.

One of the guys came up to the booth.  “You need to play something you can’t dance to”, he said, sounding urgent, “or you’re going to have one very naked bitch on the floor”.

He seemed to think that was a bad thing.

“OK, well, you might wanna get her to slow down a bit”, I said, paying the guy as much attention as I now pay the kids when they bug me for something dumb.

“I warned you, man”.  He walked away.
“Thanks!”, I called after him, not knowing or caring if he heard me.

I was having a hard time finding my next record; my attention was focused on the bin for about a minute, until a commotion behind me, on the dance floor, caught my attention.

The birthday girl had managed to toss almost all of her clothes in that minute; she was on the floor in her panties, lurching about, trying to peel them off as her friends tried to reason with her – as opposed to, say, keeping her from getting undressed.

I called for a bouncer.

The evening got a lot quieter after that.

———-

Earlier in the week, I’d heard from a friend of a friend that a friend of a friend of his “has a big project starting up”, and that I’d be “perfect for it”.

I called him.

“I’m starting an all-weekend, all-talk radio network”, he said, explaining his business plan.  It’s in New York”.  He needed a producer and off-hours host.  And, if I was going to be in New York, we could certainly talk.

As luck’d have it, I pointed out, I would indeed be in New York – in about ten days, in fact.

We set up an interview.

That was three.

Certainly – certainly – something would pan out.

It had to.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Monday, October 6th, 2008 at 12:45 pm and is filed under Twenty Years Ago Today. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.