James T. Fisher's On The Irish Waterfront

James Fisher (00:03.458)
family first appeared in the United States in eighteen forty six from the famine in Ireland, they're from the west coast of Ireland from West Cork, and Clare and both my mother's and father's side. My father's side was in Brooklyn four generations, in one block on the same street corner, Hickson Pacific Street in South Brooklyn, which no one in my family ever knew about. I've been I've been recent years since I retired from my professor job, I've been I've been doing enormous amounts of research and minimal amounts of publishing. And I have the vast dot data of

about South Brooklyn that he was interested. But at the same time, I was also very interested in the Jersey side of my family story, which is emotionally real w much I'm much more totally grounded. And that side was my great grandfather was a dock worker a Pennsylvania Railroad down down in what is now Tribeca and Canal Street area and he moved to he moved his family to Harrison, New Jersey on the Passaic River in around nineteen ten.

And so my family the I've had some Hudson County presence in my family for a hundred and fifteen years and I was always fascinated by it. never forget my mother my mother one time I asked her what her grandfather did for a living, and she said he was a dock worker when he worked. And as a kid you say, Well, what does that mean? Like when he worked, like was he or wasn't a and of course and that was really the seed. My mother was a fascinating tremendous character worker.

radio and WR and New York City, an incredible interest in media and the world and politics and the Irish. And so and my family's Irish on the both sides. I always had a fascination because we moved a lot, including places like Pittsburgh and Connecticut. My father worked for a company. They moved him a lot, but it always returned to Jersey. And I had this fascination, just that whole archipelago, you know, of the Hudson County and the rivers and New York City and Jersey City and Hoboken.

and that way of life that was it deeply imbued my family for a very long time. But I never participated I never partook of it myself because I never I never lived there as a kid.

Tom the producer (02:12.206)
specifically when you say that way of life, do you mean the dock working way of life or i was there more color in your head about what you were thinking?

James Fisher (02:19.968)
The yeah, just the kind of yes, exactly. Like the kind of New York New Jersey war front life, which was the life of both sides of my family for the whole it's whole history until the my father got a chance to go to the University of Notre Dame and then and unfortunately in some ways. Everything was history after that because then then comes the mobility, the upper mobility, the social mobility, geographic, and then all that is in the rear view mirror. And there was very little interest there's no interest in my family other than my mom's interest in

in f in history and it was always very sort of anecdotal and very kind of mysterious. And she would say, My grandfather my great grandfather worked as a dock worker when he worked. And I never quite understood that. Of course I came to understand later about the nature the casual nature of waterfront work and those kinds of things. So I so when I dropped out of college, I I used to I worked as a caddy out of Summer County for years. I was a I caddy at a golf club. And and so as the season was ending

And I was out of college, I was and I had no pro future, no prospects. I decided to drive a s a taxi cab in New York City. And this was this is the era of the movie Taxi Driver, seventy six and seventy seven. And of course, where am I gonna live? And my mother said to me, We were living in Somerset County, right on the train on the Uri Lackawanna on the train line. you had to switch an Hoboken in those days and then take the path train. she said to me, You know, Jimmy,

People like you are moving to Hoboken. And it was a really a remarkable, kind of prescient kind of observation, because in fact it wasn't really true. I didn't know anybody like when I got to Hoboken, I didn't need anybody like me to move to Hobogan. It was Hoboken was overwhelmingly still. It was Hoboken. This was not the Hoboken of a decade later, the Hoboken of

the famous book, Yuppies Invade My House at Dinner Time. Now I never met a yuppie in Hobook in eighty years in the year of the year that I lived there. I lived at six or four Bloomfield Street. I lived in the upstairs of a house owned by an Italian family, Italian American family, an immigrant family, who had come over to the United States, and who after renting me this place promptly returned to Italy with their children and left me alone in this, you know, it was a d deteriorating property on the corner six in Bloomfield, right across the street.

James Fisher (04:33.866)
Where Stephen Collins Foster, the great songwriter, lived once lived with this still plaque to commemorate it. But I lived in a place that had minimal heat. And in fact, well, I always tell people in terms of Hope Book and how it changed. I I not only I paid $125 a month for an enormous one-bedroom apartment, but there was another one-bedroom apartment on the floor that was unoccupied but furnished and open. So in other words,

How I chose it. I really had my choice of place to sleep at night. I have two two different apartments. And that's kind of how it was very, very casual. It was it was it w almost impossible to describe how different Hoboken was in nineteen seventy six compared to what it became. And of course, it was a city it had to the Germans and the Irish and the shipping and then the Italian Americans. And the Italian Americans were now dominant in Hoboken politically.

in the nineteen seventies, but there was a very, very large Puerto Rican community which which will really fell victim to this kind of rapacious redevelopment schemes that involve a lot of arson. People eighteen people died I think on Clinton Street in the late 70s of fire. It was really scary in a lot of ways. And it was also scary in terms of the whole born and bread thing. It was a rough town and I joked about like how people

y the the yumpies invaded my house dinner time because I I was very conscious of being an outsider and and I used to try to like hold on to like whatever bona fides I could have like about my family having been there and lived there. In fact my my family was really very deeply involved in the hi history and the politics and the education business in Harrison, New Jersey, which is Hudson County, but you try not to tell that to people in Hoboken. In Hoboken, Harrison is not really Hudson County. It'll it really doesn't count, you know? So

So anyway, but I had this fascination with the city and I was aware that there were people who'd once worked on the docks. I'd see at the Victor Hotel, the bar there, you'd see people on the streets. There were home there were older homeless people in Hoboken and there

James Fisher (06:42.712)
was a city on the on the brink or on the verge. It was either going to completely deteriorate to the point of extinction, or we know the story said what happened. So anyway, all this plants a seed, you know, so that years later, when I was I was teaching out in St. Louis, Missouri, I had a number of academic jobs, I became a historian. I went to Rutgers, I got my degrees at Rutgers in in Jersey and I wound up after one job I wound up out in St. Louis

And on return trips to Jersey, I just became re-fascinated by the port, by the port of New York and New Jersey, by the container cars that pile like mountains from off of you know Port Newark and Port Elizabeth. And I began to s to conclude I needed to write a book about Port of New York and New Jersey, which we focused more on the Jersey side than previous works had done. And of course, I got really lucky, incredibly

incredibly fortuitous. The fact that on the waterfront was shot in Hoboken in nineteen fifty four, and the whole story behind that, a lot of people still call it a New York movie. We all know the story about Jersey and New York, the the rivalries and things. But but but the c the making of the film, the relationship between the Jesuit labor priest who was who was in fact at New York City, John Coridon, and the discovery of Hoboken as the location, you know

See, don't forget, in nineteen fifty four, nobody went to Hoboken and had no business there. Years later, I'd I'd get out of the off the train of the path train, I come out, I see all these suburban kids in the bar around the bar milling around the bars there, you know? Like met my I was thinking like, it's amazing 'cause like thirty years earlier, no one ever got off the path train and d dawdled in Hoboken. There was no business ready. I'd go as a kid, we'd go to the clam broth house and things like that when it was still there.

My writing the book about on the waterfront was a little bit of a tribute to that experience I spent there in seventy six when it was still that kind of town, that kind of Longstorm's town. But it by then it was a town that it's had all the all that glory sort of faded. I've always had this tremendous love for Hoboken and there's no place like it and brought people there all my all my life I've brought people there. Can't can't tell you how many people I brought to to

James Fisher (09:04.416)
Stevens you Castle Point and Stevens Check for the Views, the whole thing though, the whole all of it. And I gotta say, I will say this. Beginning in the early nineteen eighties, when I was starting graduate school, I wrote my dissertation on slightly a different subject, but but beginning in the early nineteen eighties, I started taking my friends from Rutgers to Hoboken who'd never been there. Again, never. People didn't know about it still for the most part. And so

I did begin a a practice of visiting the Shannon Lounge first street, which I only in advance of this podcast, I was just I was surprised, amazed it's it's still there. It it bears no resemblance to what I can understand what I read about it. The Shannon Lounge was a classic, incredibly vivid, kind of primal.

Irish, it wasn't an Irish pub. It wasn't a it was just an old Irish bar for Irish people and with Irish bartenders and the atmosphere was incredible. There's no place like it. And I really got a little bit of a home book and education in there too, frequenting there quite often. One of the things that one of the first revelations, that's where I discovered how the Irish have this fascinat this love for American country music.

Because in the Shannon, they would alternate on the jukebox, they would alternate Irish and country music. And that was the policy. It was a strictly observed policy. So that was one thing I learned. I I hadn't thought about this until I you told me you invited me to be on this podcast. My links between Hoboken in seventy six and the time I began to write the book on the Irish waterfront, the late nineties, a lot of it was going up to Hobok and my friends, going to Shannon, walking around, hanging around the neighborhoods. It's fascination I had.

with the architecture and the changing nature of the city, you know? And so anyway, that's that's really what happened. And then I gotta say, the one of the greatest days of my life was the day in I believe in 2003 when I was working on the book, a friend of mine named Jim Garabone from New York City, who was a f who was also fascinated by on the waterfront, he and I arranged with Bud Schulberg, the

James Fisher (11:26.754)
screenwriter of On the Waterfront to give a Hoboken walking tour of the locations for the film. And that and co hosting by Lenny Lenny Letsey, the Lenny Letsey of Hoboken. And it was an incredible day. It was an unbelievable day. We visit site after site Saints Peter and Paul, you know.

James Fisher (11:57.358)
place Legion Park of course, almost all the locations that are memorable from the film, we we t we walked with Bud, who was ninety years old at the time, and we his eighties and we and and there is video footage, there's incredibly valuable video.

Documentary footage of this. Can you imagine, though? The man who wrote On the Waterfront won the full Academy Award for the film, who now agreed to show a small group of folks where the film was shot and to relate the themes from the film with the locations and how they chose them. And it was really one of the greatest days of my life. And so, of course, then.

When I began teaching at Fordham I it was right around that same time, 2002, I began teaching at Fordham Then I began taking my own students to Hoboken, by the ferry or the path train and taking my own leading my own walking tours through the city of Hoboken. It brings me to vr verge of tears, what it meant to me. And I'll then I forget one day on the ferry and we turned the corner headed south.

And just as we passed the Hoboken Historical Museum, out comes Bob Foster, you know, like perfect timing. He walked right out to the middle of our our group and then we had a little to talk about 'cause I'd done so you know, I'd done several events at the Hoboken Historical Museum. So I did an MC and then when they did a big showing, they did a big screening of the film on Pier A after my book came out, they had a pr they had a series, you know, a summer series. I that's this happened twice. The first time

My friend Jim Garamot and I went over and we talked and we met dozens of people who'd been extras in the film. Can you imagine? 'Cause as you know, in the on the waterfront, all the long shore all the longshoremen without speaking parts were were real longshoremen. A couple of longshoremen with speaking parts were real longshoremen too. And that's an interesting story, including a couple of guys who end up making a living later working in the movies. But that was the one night I remember we we just w we went just start introducing ourselves to folks.

James Fisher (14:16.092)
and having telling us the stories about Brando, about you staying. And then of course I got to know Tommy Hanley, the great Tommy Hanley, who was appears as a child in the Golden Warriors gang on the roof of the building in Hobok, and which is the building in which he lives, I believe. And got to know him. We did some touring with him. Gosh, it's it's really going on you see I have this I have this still sort of devotion. It's really like a religious devotion to to the city of Hobok and to my memories, of course, to the making of the film, which is

the greatest film ever made in the United States in my view. And so that's just that's that's really the story there. And then I was lucky to write the book and then, you know, lo and behold I was able to give fifty or s even sixty presentations all around the the i the communities within the port of New York and New Jersey in Weehawk and in Hoboken in Jersey City, across the river, all over lower Manhattan. And I got very, very lucky. Of course it's an academic book. It wasn't like a bestseller, but it did very well with it. And

It's really been the story and then the story of my life. And then of course, you know, with my own family, with my wife Christine, who's from California, where I l currently live, and my son Charlie, who is autistic, we began to spend a lot of time ho a lot of meaningful time Hawaii and Hobogan together. You know, the three of us had taken the boat, taking the path train and taking the train, you know, from from Union County where we lived. I've never been far from Hobogan when I'm back on the East Coast, when I'm back in New Jersey. And there's never a visit

to the east coast that does not include a stop at Hobok and and you know so it's it is really my life. I mean it's really it's given me meaning in my life. But it's back to my mom, trying to like honor a little bit of my family's experience, my great grandfather who was a dock worker when he worked, you know, because we're talking about a lot of poverty, like four generations of really dire poverty on both sides of my family after eighteen forty six. and really only in World War Two. You know, World War Two which was

The engine for so many people of th of this rise to the middle class. I mean, you know, my family was in America for a hundred years. They were the lender class in many ways, certainly lower, lower working class or underclass. And then World War II comes along and all of a sudden you think a lot of opportunities in the economy changes. And suddenly there are opportunities. And those opportunities never included living in Hoboken, New Jersey, right? For families, you know what I mean? For f for families from there after World War II.

James Fisher (16:41.494)
for not all by any means but many, especially it's the Irish, it's very true. There was this tremendous suburban diaspora, which is what made New Jersey the great suburban Mecca that it is. And so that's pretty much the story, you know, and

Tom the producer (16:57.464)
Well, let me ask you about a couple a couple specific w chapters in your book. And I'd like to dig a little specifically into a Father Corden. And that's, you know, there's a real niche topic that nobody else is gonna walk in here equipped to lay out. And it might seem a little it might seem getting down to a fine point, but that's actually I'd like to lean that way. I'd rather give them something

They're not gonna hear anywhere else than than something sort of general Irish history. Can we dig into fathercord and to whatever extent you you've gotten at the top of your tip of your tongue?

James Fisher (17:38.702)
Absolutely, yeah. So so John Corden was a Jesuit priest from from the Jesuit province of New York, and he was a guy that, you know, his father had been a cop in in the city and he died young and he John Corden grew up in Ascension Parish up when it had been an Irish neighborhood, 107th Street in the west side, and he went to work at a kind of a back office wall Wall Street job in the nineteen twenties. he went to Regis High School, which was the old Jesuit Jesuit high school.

And he had an idea about the Jesuits, but then he decided to go into business. And after a few years, he figured he had enough of that. And he did, in fact, join the Jesuits in the n in the nineteen early nineteen thirties. And so in those days, you know, there were armies of Jesuits. There were armies of battalions, brigades, of priests all over, especially the East Coast, New York City, the Midwest. There were he went to a seminary in Saint St. Louis to study philosophy for the Jesuits.

There were so many guys named John. They didn't have that guy many guys named Pete, so they named it Pete. And it became known as Pete Cordon. And that became the basis of the character Pete Barry in the film on the waterfront. Anyway, so he was very interested in labor relations. And the Catholic Church had theories about labor, but they didn't have that much action, you know? They didn't have that much presence. In fact, it was very little until the nineteen thirties and early nineteen forties when the church began to all encourage or authorize di different

orders of priests including the Jesuits, they began these apostolates to to the to the working class, work to l working people. And so Corden got involved in this thing called the Xavier Labor School, which was at Xavier High School, which is the high school of course, the big church is still there on West 16th Street. And but he wasn't interested in teaching. He was interested in doing. And so anyway, one thing led to another, he got involved when he began to learn about some struggles that some Irish Catholic dock workers were having with their with their employer.

on the west side of Manhattan. And of course the whole key to understanding the story of on the Irish Warfront, the movie on the waterfront, the whole key to everything, which is de which is treated implicitly in the movie and suggested and see it it becomes explicit at certain points. It was all a struggle within Irish Catholicism in the New York metropolitan area because the employers were Irish too. The the guy named Bill McCormick who ran the gigantic Stevedoring firms. And so

James Fisher (20:03.574)
The problem with the Cathol the church had this dilemma now in the nineteen thirties and forties, it was accustomed to battling against communists and sort of non Catholic or anti Catholic elements. They had to decide what to do in terms of social justice for dock workers who were being exploited and oppressed by their own, by wealthier, much power more powerful Irish Catholics. And so that became that became the basis of the story that I pursued, you know, in the in on the Irish waterfront. And Cory was a tough guy, he's a difficult guy.

you know, troubling guy, I like that about him. You know, he was like he didn't do well i in the communal settings for the Jesuits. He wanted to be on his own, you know. And so so he he he developed his own apostolate to the West Side dock workers in Manhattan. And he was a real New York guy. And so that and that's of course how he met Bud Schulberg. He met him in New York and the the screenwriter and but Bud Schulberg who win the Academy Award for the film and other characters who who got involved in making the film. But the one thing is they didn't know where to make

They want to make a movie about the west side of Manhattan because that's where Corden had provided tips to a journalist named Malcolm Johnson who'd written a s series of articles called Crime on the Waterfront in 1948. Yeah, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for the Old New York Sun, a paper which, you a long defunct newspaper. And Corden was the source, and he even probably helped write some of these stories. He became an incredible knowledgeable expert. Corden's one of these guys, everything's inside baseball. He was a

He's one of these Irish guys that was obsessed with being in the know, you know, and he was in the no. And so he developed this whole kind of insider way of the language, you know, the jargonry, the way people talked, the bars and he was a drinker, and he went to the bars with them. He loved this place called Billy the Oystermans and Chelsea. And you know, he he became an ally of these dock workers who trying to overthrow the corrupt union leadership, the guy named Joe Ryan.

Who was the leader of the International Experiment Association? He was basically a figurehead. He was in the back pocket of a guy named Bill McCormick, who's this huge, powerful, multi, multi-millionaire industrialist who ran several Stevenor companies you know, during this period and was the most powerful figure in the port. In fact, he became known as Mr. Big of the Port. And so he had this Titanic struggle, you know, and they they really had it out from each other. And they all kind of had came from the same kind of background.

James Fisher (22:21.934)
Some had made it, you know, further and s and some had forgotten where they come from, and some, you know, and some were trying to survive where they came from. And Corden had this deep sympathy, tremendous powerful sympathy for the working class. And they were they it was it's almost impossible to describe. I've talked about Hoboken in nineteen seventy six. It's the memory I have of Hoboken gave me a pretty clear feeling for what it was like for dock workers, unlike me, that would have had enormous families.

for example, who lives in tenements with little or no heat, sometimes no hot running water, really, really impoverished and oppressed and downtrodden, and they didn't seem to have any alternative. So this guy, John Corden, Pete Corden, he provided a kind of an apostolate to the dock workers and they decided to try to overthrow the corrupt ILA leadership, the union and

Bringing a new union. It was very, really far fetched. None of it worked. But I'd like to say what they got out of it was this beautiful film. And that's a whole long story in itself. But basically, can you imagine now when they when they wanted to make the film on the waterfront, they they were determined to make it on location. And Eli Kazan, the director, was only going to do it. He wants to do it on location. Had to be, had to have that greedy reality. And that was very rare at the time.

But they knew they couldn't shoot on the west side. It was it was it was literally too dangerous. They would have been the victims of violence had they tried to do that. To make a film to make the d uni look bad, it would never work. And so they kind of s cast around and here's the here's the point I want to make, and this is what I love about the whole idea of the port as a region. Like the port is a distinct region. It's the third state, you know? The Port Authority region, which is started in nineteen twenty one to kind of coordinate commerce between the between the

You know, the Port Authority was created to build a freight rail tunnel. You know, we can't even now they're still trying to build a people tunnel that's what to replace the broken down ones, but for the commuter rail, but there was never a freight rail tunnel because there's no cooperation on both sides of the river politically. So anyway, Hoboken was completely alien terrain to these New Yorkers. And so,

James Fisher (24:47.19)
It was Austin Tobin, who was the Irish ex-Catholic Irish executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. He had taken possession the Port Authority had. They had taken possession of the peers at Hoboken in nineteen i j j just years or a few years earlier in Newark and Hoboken. And Tobin said, You want to make a movie about this bar front dilemma? Because Tobin was pretty sympathetic to Corbin too, because he wanted to clean up the corruption in the port. Tobin said,

I can give you a pier to make the film on. And can you imagine what that did? The switch that turned on. He says, I will give you a pier and they actually roll the equipment onto that pier, Pierce. You know, we're now Pierce Park. They rolled the equipment onto that pier overnight, or in the middle of the night, at the dark of the they can begin filming that scene, the famous shape up scene, in in on the waterfront, which was the scene they filmed in November of nineteen fifty three and it was cold, it got colder. Anyway,

But I would take my students there.

Tom the producer (25:47.822)
Can you give us a paragraph explanation of what the shape up is?

James Fisher (25:53.626)
The shape up, the shape up was a system of hiring, a method of hiring dock workers. And of course it all depended on how many ships were in the harbor and how many men were needed. So they c they they always maintained a kind of a flexible labor supply. They needed workers on one day, didn't need them the other day. So people who were not given regular work were often there were classes or categories of dock workers. Some could count on regular work, most could not. And so they simply had to turn up

in and ho in the hope that there were ships in the harbor that needed to be unloaded or loaded. And so that became zone as a shape up. But of course he was rife to all kinds of corruption. He could kick back and bribes and all those things so that people could try to w work just to support their families. And so that became the basis of the waterfront economy. And of course it became the basis that as your series has made so clear, of of the of the local saloon or bar as the hiring hall, as the place to get information about jobs.

That's why the bars were on the waterfront because men needed to know in very short notice if there were jobs and they would go line up for these jobs. So so that was the shape of it was a system that for for Corridon, it symbolized the corruption of the whole hiring system and the economy of the port. But you know, Tom when I would take my students from Fordham, I would take them to Hoboken and we come down River Street as you start to approach like the area around St. Peter and Paul, then we would turn down the hill, and suddenly you could see the panorama like

the the way the Hoboken is terraced, you know, there's the waterfront and then there's and then there's the sort of the palisades, those are sort of the little cliffs there. And you can just see how the f visual tableau is all presented in the movie on the waterfront. See this was a complete God's gift to the filmmakers. The Hoboken is is really the star of the film, along with Marlon Brando And of course nobody they didn't make much of the fact that it was shot in the Hoboken. They really kinda always kept that quiet. People they let people think it was a New York film, fine, whatever. But

the what makes the film is the visual the visual richness that was made possible by Hoboken's topography and the geography and the physical you know infrastructure of the port. and the fact that they did it on almost on the sly.. and there was a lot of action, you know, there was attempts to sabotage the shoot. guys from other peers were throwing stuff onto this film s onto the set, you know, and and then of course it became pretty controversial.

James Fisher (28:19.618)
Then they they got involved in paying people to protect the cast and crew. And and some of the people who were paid to protect the cast and crew were prominent figures in Hoboken and people involved with police and other agencies. And it and it just became this incredible drama, you know? And at the same time, by the way, the one thing I always like to make the point, at the very same time that they're shooting this film in nineteen fifty late nineteen fifty-three,

there's a there's an a recertification election going on in which the union itself now is filing because the you the ILA the the International Long Shoreman Association was expelled from the AFML from the labor movement and so they were able to the the the insurgent dock workers and really inspired by Corridan they were able to get a new election to certify either the old union or the new union and there's a campaign going on. there's a campaign going on

At the very moment that this film is being shot, I'm just gonna give you one example how dramatic this was in the f and this is something no one else had had noticed or written about. when when Johnny Friendly is punched into the river by Pop Doyle at the end of the scene after Marlon Brandon and Terry Dor Bloy have been beaten half to three quarters to death, right there on the on the pier.

can see in the background of the shot there's a dinghy, you know, a little little rowboat in the river. And there's a gigant there's a sticker on it says Rebel N Y, right? It says Rebel NY. Should have said Rebel, NY and NJ. Well what they meant was this was a signal to like the dock workers, you know what I mean? Like vote against the island, you know, vote for this new union. So so the film was even kind of a campaign film, you know? That's how real it was. It was almost like guerrilla theater filmmaking.

They were trying to promote a social justice campaign, an election campaign for a reformed union. At the same time they were telling this story, like a a really a beautiful, you know, f fictional feature film story. And so it worked out magnificently well. And

Tom the producer (30:33.088)
And the the the there was an outcome, but did the movie not actually spawn all sorts of investigative journalism about corruption in the unions and then sort of s let loose this buzz around crime and corruption that was union based?

James Fisher (30:50.526)
It did, and that was a huge theme, you know. Of course there'd been a lot of investigative journalism before the film that inspired the film that led to the film and then there was more. And then of course the irony, the ILA was in fact recertified. That's the other thing. And that's that and that's one of the things I I'll never forget in later years. I will never forget Tom, in later years, even fifty years later of after the film was made, I gave a talk at Seaton Hall and a man came up to me at the end, a guy named Joe, I know I won't tell his last name, but he's just a deaf

And he was a hoboken doc worker and he looked at me and he said, You know, a lot of this was hype. You know, he said, This guy really didn't do that much for us as he said, this priest. I'll ever forget, wow. Like that was a heavy thing to hear after all that. You know what I mean? 'Cause and there'd always been that undercurrent. Yeah, well, you know, they're doing this thing, it's like public relations for the Jesuits, whatever. Because the fact is it wasn't very well organized, the the reform campaign. of course he wasn't a politician. And, you know, this it broke his heart. He kind of wrecked his life, you know.

failure of the of the political campaign. But but still though the seed was planted there. And I think there's nothing like in other words, it's a it's it's as a document that advocating social justice, it's an incredibly powerful it's like an Italian neo-realist film, you know, it it has this incredibly visceral power that you rarely ever see in American films that treat political or social issues. but yeah the book it generated a tremendous interest in the l in in in the in the labor issues.

But they really remained unresolved, you know. the other thing about history, the way it works is it all becomes moot because of containerization, you know. And two years after the movie is made, this guy in the Carolinas events, you know, he invents containerization technology. The next thing you know, and now we know the you know, what the outcome of that is. There are hardly any more dock workers and it's all automated. But and that's and that of course is the story of Old Hoboken

That's the story of what happened to Hoboken. And then all these dock workers lost. Some of them went on the guaranteed annual income, they called it, and they they'll survive that way for a while. But it was the whole end of a way of life. Think about that. It's the end of an entire way of life on the Hudson River coast in Jersey City and Hoboken. And that's it. It's over, you know? By the sixties, I mean it's ending, you know? And the face seventies, it dwindled and then it just disappeared completely. And that's what makes it a fascinating story.

James Fisher (33:17.014)
Really, it's one of those unbelievable t stories of America re about revival or renewal and all the controversies about the rebirth of a city like Hoboken, which is rendered completely unrecognizable to people who live there. Although I will say, you know, again for the born and breads one of my favorite lines ever for the born and breads is when asked, What do you think about all these yuppies that are moving in so all all over Hoboken? And they said

on the first of the month when we collected rent, we absolutely love them to death. You know, there was that whole like an o you know, incentive and it depended. If you had p real estate, you know, depending how well you did, there were people who did extremely well for themselves and still do in terms of the Hoboken revival. But it is eerie almost. It's very eerie for me. Like some sometimes I'm more ho when I'm in Hoboken, this b this began like in even in the nineties and the two thousands. When I would go to Hoboken

And I'd see all these kids in their, you know, in their preppy attire. Sorry. And armies of partiers from suburban New Jersey. And I would always want to like walk through them and say, Well, do you know what happened here like fifty, sixty years ago? Do you know what it was like here? Do you know how different it is today than it was? As of course, nobody gave a damn what it had been you know, there that's not what they were there for. But it sometimes it almost feels a little sacrilegious to me, you know, the way the like

what Hoboken turned into, it feels a little bit of a mockery sometimes.

Tom the producer (34:46.574)
Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? They've sacrificed every bit of sense in that town for bike lanes on every street. Can you im you know what the streets the whole booking are 15 inches wide and there's parking on both sides, and now they all have bike lanes. Yeah, no, it's absolutely mismanaged. They've they've done everything they can just to pile on, just so you walk away, maybe hopefully with something.

That you didn't even know was this terrible. But that is they're literally taking the things that you used to move to Westfield for, you used to move to Livingston for, you used to move to Livingst Morristown for your walks in the parks and your bikes and your kids' soccer. Now you've destroyed Hoboken. And and guess and guess what? Your walks kind of suck. Your bike lanes kind of suck.

James Fisher (35:36.6)
What?

Tom the producer (35:44.95)
And your kids are playing soccer with trucks going by fifty yards away. You still didn't create Livingston, but you absolutely destroyed Hoboken .

James Fisher (35:53.684)
trying figure this out exactly 'cause we came back, you know, was in St. Louis for seven years, came back. and I spent you know, we were we were really very devoted to our our son's his you know, his education, his well being. But I mean we went to Hobugan all the time whenever we could. So anyway, and then one time though I was on my own and I went I decided I wanted to go to the Clam Bar and when I got there I didn't find it. I

I didn't see it. The sign was still the the clam thing on you know the family But the absolute business was no longer there. And I thought where is it? Is it n did it move? It no longer existed. But the thing is, in the nineteen eighties I spent so much time at the clam bar and

Tom the producer (36:26.702)
Yeah. Yeah, the the hand with the c

Tom the producer (36:37.678)
Forgive me, but you're talking about the clam broth house.

James Fisher (36:41.006)
The Clambroth house. We used to call the Clam Bar, yeah, the Clambroth House, the place where women were no women were not allowed until the nineteen seven

Tom the producer (36:47.214)
I'm guessing at that time there was probably fifty clam bars in Hoboken, technically. I'll mention one place because it's near to my heart and because they are associated with the series. Piccolo's famous for cheese steaks started as a clam bar.

James Fisher (37:02.891)
Yeah.

There you go. See that. Well, this was the Clair I called the Clamborough, the Clambroth House. But the funny thing is I was living I was living in New Brunswick in the years where I w was a frequented. I really was a regular frequenter of the Clambroth house. And the funny thing is, you know, I I thought I'm fishing out of the whole punk rock scene, which is very active in New in New Brunswick. In the nineteen eighties, bands like the Smithereen's came out. It was more like kind of new new waves, you know, great rock and roll stuff. But anyway, of course, you know, Maxwells, the famous Maxwells club.

I'm not proud to say this, but I it's just notable, I'll say. I never set foot in Maxwell's in all those years, even though I left I love the Feelies also those big bands, because I just wanted to hang out in the clam broth house because, you know, let's face it, rock and roll joints, they're kind of a dime a dozen, you know? But there's only one clam broth house. And you know, there was there see that's the thing to me is the distinctiveness, the uniqueness, the total, utter uniqueness of the of

of the city of Hoboken, the life and the culture of that community. Of course, it's easy to go back and look back and all these things that change and all that stuff. But just never forget never forget that feeling, like, wow, it's not if if the Clambroth house is no more and it was allowed to just go sort of unceremoniously, then wow, like yeah, like all these ways of living and being around here that meant so much to so many people, you know, they and it happens though. But it it's just a Hoboken is a very, very dramatic setting.

for the kinds of change that we're describing.

Tom the producer (38:34.208)
You're correct. Be be it was so niche of a it was such a niche culture that you're not taking the average l scene. I mean, you're talking about a place that was literally a choke point for everyone who entered the country. So so t so and t and so it got flavored in particular ways with undiluted

seasoning from whichever culture was dominant at the time. And you showed up when there were remnants from multiple different cultures still rooted deep and still w widely adopted and ingrained as what made Hoboken Hoboken. So for you to complain about a change to Hoboken or point out a change to hoboken

Is a bit of a deeper cut than the average change to the average one mile square town is entirely appropriate.

James Fisher (39:41.186)
This is really fun. man, I'll never forget the Shannon, you know. I'll never forget the guy. I mean and they were pretty there were some pretty pretty native people in there. And of course, you know, there is the Irish cause too, you know? They are just like Irish Republicanism, you know, it was like a it was like a live issue in pla still in Hoboken, you know? And gosh, you know, those were the days and

Well, just grateful having to have had a little piece of that. You know, I live in California now. Well, obviously it's

Tom the producer (40:15.486)
these well, these combos have been a hoot for everybody. Like the the guys calling me are like, this is so much fun. Because it's it's it's just a time warp. and I and so for the people listening, some of them have hit me up and been like like they've they've listened to a segment with their second favorite bartender, followed by a segment with their favorite bartender that they literally shared swap stories with for probably fifteen years. So it's it's

Like smelling something that your grandmother used to bake when you grow up and it it inst it time warps you in in a full experiential way. You're like, my God, I'm back there. That's kind of what listening to an Irishman who spent decades serving you is like. Some

James Fisher (40:59.585)
Right, yeah, exactly.

Tom the producer (41:03.526)
I produce podcasts for lawyer lawyers, law firms mostly, but also some nonprofits and stuff. And so I started doing this because I want to sell the same type services I sell to law firms to hospitality businesses. Like Yeah, I sell them digital media, I sell SEO, I sell social marketing, all that stuff. I try and build a media entity.

And then sell those services around that media entity. Because a business that's interested in paying to do a three-part series on their new bar, for example, is probably a good prospect for the service we run that optimizes their Google Maps for takeout orders or something. Then we'll also write blogs, articles, socials, stuff like that. But for a for a cheesesteak joint or a bar, it usually can be just

James Fisher (41:47.976)
I get wow.

Tom the producer (41:58.466)
You know, record some podcasts a couple times a year and keep your Google maps in shape. But this is a fair fair question. It's this whole Hoboken series I'm doing out of love of the game and to have an example of a authority platform. This is already being cited in AI summaries at the top of Google as a source on Hoboken Irish history. This podcast.

James Fisher (42:19.48)
That's amazing. Is there all carbon the skin of some of my s my Charlie, my he's class, he's twenty nine now, you know? My son and I we've so we've ridden eighty thousand miles on our bicycles together, right? And of course, yes, we rode bikes at O'Hoke, but mostly in Bayonne. We used to love and Jersey City. We go from Liberty State Park, we go to Bayonne and then back up under the Bayonne Bridge to the back, you know what I mean? And and then out in the country in Harden County and here, all over the San Francisco Bay.

'Cause you know, he's not a talker and I am a talker. We get on bikes together, there's no t we don't have to talk and we just love the hell out of it, you know. And so that's been my life.