Your Hometown Kevin Burke

Glenn Ligon is a renowned artist who gives us new ways of seeing American history, literature, and society. How can we see him better through the lens of childhood? In this episode of Your Hometown, Glenn speaks with Kevin Burke about his experiences growing up in the South Bronx in the 1960s and 70s, including his hour-and-a-half commute each way to Walden, the private school he attended on the Upper West Side from the first grade on. His mother made going to Walden possible for Glenn and his brother, and it involved sacrifices and risks. A commute is one thing. Where it can lead, another.
 
How would this change the landscape for Glenn and his family? Where would Glenn most feel at home, outside and inside, in his New York? Where would he feel safe, or watched, or like a stranger? And how does a city like New York, with its layer upon layer of construction, class, and culture, define not just the literal paths we take growing up, but the existential ones?
 
Your Hometown is a show where the local is the epic. Visit yourhometown.org to subscribe to the podcast and our various social media channels.
 
Our co-presenter this season is the Museum of the City of New York. For more, including information on live events, check out our NYC series page at mcny.org/yourhometown-podcast.
 
Show Notes
 
Archival
“Early 1970s New York Subway” from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p16a6SKjwZM
“Zora Neale Hurston '28 Sings Halihmuhfack” from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ut0xmfgcK3w
“James Baldwin: Un Étranger dans le Village" (1962) from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hPEaxeJWZQ
James Baldwin on Love and Sexuality from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZPmT3lk6cU
Clip from "The Naked Civil Servant" (1975) from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlxn3F2tIWg
 
Music
Beastie Boys - Shake Your Rump (1989)
Carl Douglas - Kung Fu Fighting (1974)
Mahalia Jackson - Silent Night (1962)
Cool Change - Streets of The Bronx (1993)
Cher - Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves (1971)
Screamin’ Jay Hawkins - I Put A Spell on You (1956)
 
Artwork
Charlotte Yiu and Nick Gregg
 
Poem
Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” Part 52, Leaves of Grass (1855)
 
“I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
 
“You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood.
 
“Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.”
 
Special Thanks
Jonah Groeneboer and Lisa Koli at Glenn Ligon Studio; and Tate Dougherty and the team at Hauser & Wirth

This is the story of an “inquiring mind” who happens to be a journalist. Sewell Chan is the new editor-in-chief of The Texas Tribune. But before his move to Austin, and before his previous roles at the L.A. Times, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, he was a kid growing up in an immigrant family in the outer boroughs of New York City, where his father drove a taxicab. Both his parents had seen a lot in their lives – but said little. Their New York was the New York of work, of their community, and of striving for a quiet, peaceful place to live, which ended up being in Queens. Yet when you meet Sewell, it's surprising that he came from such a quiet place, because he’s so engaged with the world, with history, with how people live and how things work. In this episode, Kevin Burke talks with Sewell about his coming-of-age years in New York, the meaning of home, and what the windows and doors were from where his family lived out to the larger world.
 
Your Hometown is a show where the local is the epic. Visit yourhometown.org to subscribe to the podcast and our various social media channels.
 
Our co-presenter this season is the Museum of the City of New York. For more, including information on live events, check out our NYC series page at mcny.org/yourhometown-podcast.
 
Show Notes
 
Archival
WPIX Special Report: Blackout '77-City of Darkness from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0LV0zWFsVE
Broadway's Lost Treasures - Me and My Girl from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swX0qlHRDV0
Dolora Zajick - Amneris - AIDA - MET 1989 from  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZNN0VqaSlE
Bill Clinton 1992 DNC Acceptance Speech from https://www.c-span.org/video/?27166-1/bill-clinton-1992-acceptance-speech
1998 Harvard Commencement from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl9Uj6nq4Y4
Times’s City Room Advertisement from  https://www.nytimes.com/video/nyregion/1194817108917/a-changing-metropolis.html
 
Music
Frank Sinatra - New York, New York (1980)
Ella Fitzgerald - Manhattan (1965)
Willie Nelson - Texas on a Saturday Night (1985)
 
Illustration
Charlotte Yiu
 
Poem
Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” Part 52, Leaves of Grass (1855)
 
“I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
 
“You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood.
 
“Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.”

Tiffany Cabán captured national headlines when she came within a hair’s breadth of winning the primary for district attorney in her hometown of Queens, New York, in 2019. It was an audacious move: a young, out-of-nowhere candidate running in her home borough against the establishment on a platform calling for major changes to the system. Snatching a moral victory from the jaws of electoral defeat, Tiffany kept speaking out. Two years later, she’s just won a seat on the New York City Council, where she will have a voice in the debate about what kind of hometown New York wants to be.
 
In this interview, host Kevin Burke talks with Tiffany about her coming-of-age story and what she experienced back there that made her someone who gets up and chooses to march on the front lines, has the skills to organize – and then has the fire in her soul to throw her whole being into fighting for what she believes in. This is a show about diving down to the first act in the life of a person – in this case, a person who sees something and is moved to do something about it. It’s a search for the people in her life who saw her and did something, and how she learned to stand up for herself and for others.
 
In a larger sense, it’s also about grace—the kind of mercy and compassionate understanding we find ourselves asking for and being asked to give in our lives—and whether that kind of grace, born of experience, can become the foundation for how we relate to each other.
 
Your Hometown is a show where the local is the epic. Visit yourhometown.org to subscribe to the podcast and our various social media channels.
 
Our co-presenter this season is the Museum of the City of New York. For more, including information on live events, check out our NYC series page at mcny.org/yourhometown-podcast.
 
Show Notes
 
Archival
“Tiffany Cabán @ Rally for Bernie Sanders” from https://www.c-span.org/video/?465364-1/representative-ocasio-cortez-endorses-bernie-sanders-president
"Bernie Williams singles in 11th for 4-3 walk-off win” from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iErizZHfs_U
“1010 WINS AM and CNN on Sept. 11” from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3dgKUsu-Ls
Audience footage of 2019 Tiffany Cabán campaign election party via @Samynemir on Twitterhttps://twitter.com/i/status/1144077394933932033
 
Illustration
Charlotte Yiu
 
Poem
Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” Part 52, Leaves of Grass (1855)
“I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
“You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,And filter and fibre your blood.
“Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,Missing me one place search another,I stop somewhere waiting for you.”

David Johansen is one of the all-time front men in music and an artist who keeps changing the game – not by degrees but by solar systems. In the 1980s, he had everyone feeling “Hot, Hot, Hot” as Buster Poindexter. Then he showed up as the taxi-driving Ghost of Christmas Past in the Bill Murray film Scrooged. Before all this, he was the glammed-up lead singer of The New York Dolls, the mythic rock band of the downtown NYC scene of the 1970s. Hard rock, punk rock, glam rock, heavy metal – the Dolls sit atop a lot of family trees. To this day, whatever room he walks into, from loft spaces to the swanky Café Carlyle, David Johansen owns it.
 
In part one of this epic two-part interview, David talks with host Kevin Burke about coming of age on Staten Island in the 1950s and ’60s, a kid riding bikes, buying and listening to records, going to Catholic School, joining a band, and graduating from high school at the height of the Vietnam War. How did he get from the house his grandfather built on the North Shore to the pulsating East Village at the dawn of an era he’d help define? This is the origin story of a true original.
 
Your Hometown is a show where the local is the epic. Visit yourhometown.org to subscribe to the podcast and our various social media channels.
 
Our co-presenter this season is the Museum of the City of New York. For more, including information on live events, check out our NYC series page at mcny.org/yourhometown-podcast.
 
Show Notes
 
Archival
All In The Family Opening Theme (1971)
“Horn Battle in New York - Carnival Miracle vs Harbor Tug” from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeAJbDSITAk
“Traditional Latin Catholic Mass Easter Sunday” from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6AOvStZS64
Clip from The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1961) from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5yvMExqKNA
“Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man?” From my Fair Lady (1964)
Murray the K at the Brooklyn Fox from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHu9Y0zI0t0
Bob Dylan, talking on the radio, 1966, 26th January, 1966 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG1pITY_m8E
 
Music:
Buster Poindexter - Hot Hot Hot (1987)
New York Dolls - Jet Boy (1973)
David Johansen- Heart of Gold (1987)
David Johansen - Animals Medley (live) (1982) from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Zc-DQiI8tA
Enrique Caruso - Vesti La Giuba, Pagliacci (1907)
David Johansen - Big City (1979)
David Johansen And The Harry Smiths - Well, I’ve Been to Memphis (2000)
Howlin’ Wolf - Tail Dragger (1969)
Robert Preston - “Ya Got Trouble” from the Music Man Soundtrack (1962)
The Platters - The Great Pretender (1960)
Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels - Sock it to Me, Baby (1967)
The Fantastic Johnny C - Boogaloo Down Broadway (1967)
Wilson Pickett - In The Midnight Hour (1965)
New York Dolls - Personality Crisis (1973)
Janis Joplin - Bye Bye Baby (1967)
New York Dolls - Lonely Planet Boy (1973) 
 
Illustration
Nick Gregg

Part two of David Johansen’s Your Hometown episode is the portrait of an artist in the process of becoming. If Staten Island was the setting of David’s coming of age, Manhattan would him into his next act. Hear David talk with host Kevin Burke about living in the East Village, the early days of the New York Dolls, the birth of Buster Poindexter, and performing at the Café Carlyle. David’s hometown journey is an invitation to dive into what it means to be an artist and to find what in their origins stories is knowable and what remains enigmatic – even to them – as they continue looking around the corner, following their instincts and their muses.
 
Your Hometown is a show where the local is the epic. Visit yourhometown.org to subscribe to the podcast and our various social media channels.
 
Our co-presenter this season is the Museum of the City of New York. For more, including information on live events, check out our NYC series page at mcny.org/yourhometown-podcast.
 
Show Notes
Archival
Oh Madeline “Play Crystal For Me” from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UlhfUzsu6A&t=1s
All Dolled Up: A New York Dolls Story Found Tapes from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92HhdXuqc4g
New York Dolls footage Local TV Story, 1973 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGnZ4RsUpBE
Man's Country New York Gay Bathhouse commercial from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er1Ri3qKavw
From Hot, Hot, Hot to Camelot, Buster Poindexter Plays Café Carlyle from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxULtuLMNiI
 
Music
New York Dolls - Personality Crisis (1973)
Prince Buster - Enjoy Yourself (1968)
New York Dolls - Bad Girl (Demo) (1972)
“Cabaret in the Sky” (1974) from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNTN1gpuz38
David Johansen - In Style (1979)
"Wilkommen" from Cabaret (1972)
New York Dolls - Stranded in the Jungle (1973)
Buster Poindexter- Whadaya Want (1987)
Edvard Grieg Impromptu, EG 175 (1896)
David Johansen - Mara Dreams the Moongate of Uncommon Beauty (2007)
David Johansen - Piece of My Heart from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUxAIMvuqQk (2016)
David Johansen & Larry Salzman - James Alley Blues (2005)
 
Illustration
Charlotte Yiu
 
Poem
Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” Part 52, Leaves of Grass (1855)
 
“I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
 
“You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood.
 
“Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.”

Chef Priyanka Naik is a self-taught vegan cook, Food Network champion, social media influencer, and author of the cookbook, The Modern Tiffin. In this episode, host Kevin Burke talks to Priyanka about her New York story. How did growing up on the South Shore of Staten Island as the daughter of immigrant parents shape her senses—and her sense of home and the world. What about being a kid on Staten Island drew Priyanka closer to her roots in India? What sparked her passion for taking her family’s traditional recipes and putting her own modern spin on them? And what is the deeper source of her creativity, drive, and sense of daring to put herself “out there” in print and on camera as a virtual one-woman show?
 
Your Hometown is a show where the local is the epic. Visit yourhometown.org to subscribe to the podcast and our various social media channels.
 
Our co-presenter this season is the Museum of the City of New York. For more, including information on live events, check out our NYC series page at mcny.org/yourhometown-podcast.
 
Show Notes
 
Archival
Clip of Chef Priyanka Naik from her website
https://www.chefpriyanka.com/receiving-the-1st-copy-of-my-debut-cookbook-the-modern-tiffin/
Clip of Chef Priyanka Naik from Instagram https://www.instagram.com/reel/CSZZscsDDa7/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Clip of Chef Priyanka Naik from Instagram https://www.instagram.com/reel/CSQWMGOj5gn/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Clip from CNN broadcast announcementhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuHfSo5YI_M
Clip from Throwdown with Bobby Flay (2020)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVp9QteuveQ
CNN coverage from September 11, 2001 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VveRmJpFW6o
 
Music
Billy Joel, “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” – The Stranger (1977)
 
Illustration
Nick Gregg
 
Poem
Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” Part 52, Leaves of Grass (1855)
 
“I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
 
“You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.
 
“Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.”
 
Recommended Reading
Priyanka Naik, The Modern Tiffin (Simon & Schuster, 2021)
Chef Priyanka’s website: https://www.chefpriyanka.com/