Scotty Hard: The Hard Way
EPISODE DESCRIPTION
Musician, producer, and engineer Scott Harding tells a life-changing story about a fateful night in Brooklyn in 2008. The line that Scotty crossed that night was a line that he never asked to cross. And it brought him to a space that he never asked to be in, but he has been able to navigate this space with incredible strength, resilience, and perseverance.
RELATED LINKS
MUSIC REFERENCED ON THE EPISODE
Boogie Down Productions, “Sex & Violence”
De La Soul, “Oodles Of O's”
Ultramagnetic MCs, “Pluckin Cards”
Black Sheep, “The Choice Is Yours”
Prince Paul, “Why Must You Hate Me?”
Nação Zumbi, “A Ilha”
Medeski, Martin, & Wood, “I Wanna Ride You”
Jungle Brothers, “How Ya Want It We Got It”
Gravediggaz, “Nowhere To Run, Nowhere To Hide”
Antibalas, “Who is this America Dem Speak Of Today?”
Luz Mob, “The Selecter”
Senser, “States Of Mind”
New Kingdom, “Animal”
Senser, “Brightest Rays”
Scotty Hard, “Round 2”
Céu, “Cangote”
Scotty Hard, “The General”
EPISODE CREDITS
Written, recorded, mixed, and mastered by Luz Fleming. Original Music by Luz Fleming, James Ash, and Scotty Hard. Executive Producer: Jacob Bronstein. Theme music by Andy Cotton. Cover art and episode art by Andy Outis. Production assistance by Davis Lloyd.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Yard Tales – Scotty Hard: The Hard Way
Luz Fleming:
This episode contains strong language and mature subject matter. It may not be suitable for young ears.
What up, this is Luz Fleming. You have come to the place where we tell tales of the train and bus yard, the tenement yard, and the prison yard. We detail close calls and chase stories. We dig into larger conversations about crossing boundaries. The other side of the tracks, borders, and forbidden space, whether to make big life changes, to forward the artistic or professional practice, to escape peril, or just for the sheer thrill of it.
Scotty Hard:
I guess, you know, on impact, I just sort of closed my eyes and felt like we were kind of spinning around, but I couldn't really tell what was going on and I kind of like opened my eyes and I'm like, okay, I can't feel my legs.
Luz Fleming:
Today, it is an honor to feature luminary, musician, producer, and engineer Scott Harding aka Scotty Hard as he recounts his own life changing story about a fateful night in Brooklyn in 2008. The line that Scotty crossed that night was a line that he never asked to cross and it brought him to a space that he never asked to be in, but he has been able to navigate this space with incredible strength, resilience, and perseverance.
If you're not familiar with Scotty Hard, I've got to mention how important and influential this man's work is for musicians like me. Scotty's discography runs incredibly deep and the impressive list of notable classic and often genre bending recordings in which Scotty has been involved is staggering.
I was so heavily influenced by so much of the music Scotty touched well before I ever met him. And I'm continually blown away at Scotty's uncommonly varied and extensive career, as it continues forward. Let's just take a minute to list only a few of my favorite records he has worked on: Boogie Down Productions "Sex & Violence", De La Soul "De La Soul Is Dead", Ultramagnetic MCs "Funk Your Head Up", Black Sheep "A Wolf In Sheep's Clothing", Prince Paul "Psychoanalysis, What Is It?", Nação Zumbi "Futura", Medeski, Martin, & Wood "Uninvisible", Jungle Brothers "Raw Deluxe", Gravediggaz "Six Feet Deep", Antibalas "Who Is This America?", and I'm proud to say even my own album "Luz Interpretations".
The story Scotty tells is incredibly affecting and it starts in the early nineties when his production and mixing work for the band, New Kingdom, brought him to Europe to tour with other bands. So sit back and let Scotty heart tell you his own Yard Tale.
Scotty Hard:
I was in London, working with a band called Senser. Spelled S E N S E R mate, Senser.
They're kind of like a trippy hip hop rock band with a bit of, sort of, electro type stuff. The guy who was their producer, like would mix them live and throw sounds in from the board at the front and stuff was pretty cool. A rapper, a guy rapping, a girl singing, bass guitar, drums, and a DJ.
So Senser invited New Kingdom to open for them and we played a bunch of tour dates with them over at colleges and different places. And I was mixing and we had drums percussion, the two MCs and a DJ. And, and then Heitham just became, we became friends with them all and the singer became even better friends.
We were coming back on when we were touring the next album and we were trying to slim things down and I was playing guitar and we had the same DJ, different drummer, and Jason was like, "Oh, you know what we should do, we should get Heitham to play percussion with us.” Because he played a little bongos and stuff on stage.
And we were like, “Perfect.” Because he's kind of like this cult kind of celeb, not a celebrity, but he was known not that there was an internet back then and people would've known he was playing with us on the DL (down low), but you know, the word spreads or whatever about it. Plus he was our homeboy and he introduced us to "The Fast Show" and father Ted videos in the van.
So we became really tight with him and I always just stayed friends with him and he lives in Paris now and I, you know, we would see each other from time to time. Senser broke up, who knows when, probably in the late nineties and then they got back together. I think they might've already done a record.
And then they were doing and their second come back record and they called Scotty Hard, to produce it.
And so I went over there and it was a very low rent situation and recorded it. Did a bunch of overdubs and stuff. And then I was like, okay, well, I'll take it back to New York and I'll mix it there. And I had to do some sample replacement stuff and whatnot, and I mixed the record at my studio in Brooklyn.
Yeah, I'll come anywhere to record a record, but I'm going to come back and mix it in New York because you know, the times where I haven't done that, I'm always like, “This sucks.” My studio is 10 times better than this and I have all this shit that I need. Like I've got my Space Echo and my 1176’s and all my weird vintage shit.
I bought, a vintage Neve broadcast console from Bill Laswell and we had a Pro Tools set up. We had a 24 track machine. We had little bathroom/iso booth. Then another vocal booth floated, EMT plate, and, you know, it was a pretty cool little space and it ultimately is cheaper for the band. So I was mixing there and, and I was finishing the Senser album and a couple of months after I had started in December of 2007.
So it was February of 2008. I was just finishing as a matter of fact, I think it was on the last song because I was supposed to start Guillermo Brown's record the next day.
And it's like two in the morning, the usual time when I would work till and I thought, well, I can still catch a drink at Black Betty and my buddy DJ Monk was deejaying there and he just got back from the Latin world series and we'd been talking about doing a single together. So I'm like, oh, I'll go over and say hi to Monk.
And one of my closest friends owned that place, my friend, Bud, and then my friend Michael Smith was the bartender. So I'm like, “That's a good night to go over there.”
So I called the car service and, "Okay, five mini."
Five mini.
And they shut everything down and head down to the street. So rather than just go outside, I looked through the little 12 inch square window on this industrial door cause usually the guys pull up right in front of that door and I didn't see the car. So I waited another couple minutes and it had been kind of cold in February.
It wasn't snowing, but it was cold and thought, "Oh, that's weird. These guys, they said five minutes" and usually five mini meant three mini.
So then I actually opened the door to the wind and whatnot, and it was cold and I kind of poked my head out and I'm like, “I see him.” And he's parked down the street, half a block. I guess that's where he wanted to park. So I, you know, I get out and I'm like, “Well, that's gotta be the guy black town car.” The usual, you know, I walked down the street and I kind of wave at the guy thinking he might see me.
I don't know, he didn't flash his lights or anything, but I, you know, get around to the right-hand side, you know, the rear right door, the passenger door. And I go for the handle and it didn't open. So I knocked on the window and he kind of was startled. And he kind of jumps up and kind of looks around and reaches back, opens the door and I get in and I'm like, "Hey buddy, how you doing tonight? I'm going to 360 Metropolitan." Which is Black Betty and I kind of settle in a little bit and he just peels out and he turns really sharply onto Diamond Street, which is right down from where we are. And I kind of get thrown across the seat and, you know, I didn't have my seatbelt on because I had just got in and then we bombed down Diamond Street.
And usually these guys, you know, these older dudes, they're just chilling and they're just driving 15 miles an hour all the way there, because they're not in a hurry. This guy was. So then instead of just going down Diamond all the way to get the BQE or get to Meeker Street to get to Metropolitan, he turns really sharply right on Meserole.
And at that point, not only did I slide across the seat, but my phone went flying and I think my keys as well out of my jacket and I go sliding across the seat again, "I'm like, what the fuck?" And he's going towards McGuinness, which is a major street. So I'm like, "Oh shit, well, fuck this." I thought I'd better put my seatbelt on.
So I, you know, slide back over to my side and I'm kind of fishing around for the seatbelt and all of a sudden, "Bam!"
And everything just sort of goes into a sort of suspension, as you know, when you're kind of hit by something, I guess on impact I just sort of closed my eyes and felt like we were kind of spinning around, but I couldn't really tell what was going on. And then I kind of like opened my eyes and I was all the way over to the other side behind the driver.
And I thought his seat had collapsed on me, but then I kind of looked down and I realized, like I was on the floor behind the driver, with my knees on the floor and my back just wrenched against the back seat of the car. I was basically kneeling behind the driver's seat. I was in excruciating pain in my back and I'm sort of thinking this through and what's going on and I'm like, "Okay, I can't feel my legs. Okay, so I've had a spinal cord injury here." I kind of excise my fingers, you know, kind of and I'm looking and I'm like, “Okay, my hands work. I guess I can still play the guitar that's good.” But I couldn't feel my legs. I'm pinned in the back. I bashed my head against the left passenger seat window and was bleeding from my forehead.
He was kind of sprawling backwards because he'd been airbag-ed from the steering wheel.
And not long after that somebody comes to the passenger right-hand passenger door, a guy in his house coat and his wife and like, "Oh my God, are you okay? Are you okay? No, I'm not okay call 9-1-1." And they, like, "We already did, the ambulance is on its way. Can we call anyone else? Like yeah call my partner his name is Tom." And I gave them the phone number and they called Tom's number and the woman's like, he hung up and I'm like, call him back. And they called him back immediately and he picked up cause he's like, well, if anyone's calling me at three in the morning, twice in a row, it's gotta be something going on.
And they're like, "Your friend's been in an accident." And he hands the phone over to me and I'm like, "Dude, I'm fucked up. I got I was in a car service, I got hit by a car. I'm right around the corner from the studio". He goes, "I'll be right there." And you know, he's there within minutes, so we're lying there and, you know, waiting and then the sirens come not too long after that.
And they come, the FDNY kind of pushes through and it's like, whatever, says something. I'm like, “I can't feel my legs. I, I, I think I've got a spinal cord injury.” So instead of like putting a fucking neck brace on me and doing all the shit, or even like taking me out the door that's next to me because they can't open that driver's side.
Either of the doors they can't open them. Everyone was like, "Did they get you out with the jaws of life?" And I'm like, “No, fat fireman.” So a fat fireman got me out. And so this fat guy comes sort of, you know, reaching through and I'm like, “I don't know if you should touch me, man. Like, I can't feel my legs. I think I've got a spinal cord injury.” And the guy goes, “No, don't worry about it.”
And so he drags me across the thing and just sort of plunks me onto a stretcher, which, you know, I've been told by people in the FDNY that that's not regulation, but, you know, as one of my cynical lawyers said, he goes, “Well, you said that you were, you couldn't feel your legs. So they figure, well, he's already paralyzed. What more damage can I do?”
But there is a thing called a complete spinal cord injury and a thing called an incomplete spinal cord injury. And there's a huge difference between the two. And it's possible that I could have had an incomplete spinal cord surgery, but because this guy decided that he would just drag ass across the fucking thing, like put, basically put his arms under my arms and just drag me, which could have been the difference between a complete and an incomplete injury. Although we couldn't find a neurosurgeon to testify to that. I mean, how do you do that? So we never were able to bring any action against the FDNY, but that guy was clearly negligent, but I mean, that's just a small part of the story, obviously.
And the next thing, you know, I'm in the ambulance. By this time I'm on a stretcher and I've got a neck brace on and there's a guy in the back with me and a woman in the front and my partner, Tom is in the front, he's there by then. His version of the story is he's in the front and Scott's actually my middle name.
So the guy's like, "What's your name?" And I'm like, "Scott Hardy." And he goes, "No, what's your name?" And I'm like, "Scott Harding. What's your name?" I'm like, "Scott Harding. What the fuck?" He goes, "What's your full name?" I'm like, "Oh, Charles Scott Harding." and he was like, "Oh, okay. Yeah." Because, and Tom's like, tell him, he told me this six months later that like we're in the back.
And he's like, "Scotty, you're still a belligerent motherfucker. You're like arguing with the guy about what your name is." I'm like, "Yeah, he asked me what my name was. That's my name." "So the guy puts my head in between his legs am sitting there and he goes, “We're going to get very comfortable. I'm just going to give you this extra little support because you know, we don't have a machine or whatever that might be able to completely isolate somebody's head and neck.” So he's doing it that way and I said, "I just have one question." I said, "Are we going to Woodhall?" And he's like, "No, we're going to Bellevue." And I'm like, "Okay, let's go." And we zoom off. And of course, because Bellevue is just really, almost on the other side of the Midtown Tunnel and Greenpoint, I'm in the most Northern part of Greenpoint, Northwest.
So we're just five blocks from Pulaski Bridge and right at the end of the Pulaski Bridge is the Midtown Tunnel. So, and plus Bellevue has one of the best trauma teams or one of the only trauma teams in that area, but a very good one.
So they'd take me there and they get me out and, you know, they're rolling me down the hall and I'm like, I'm seeing all these people hovering over me and stuff like that. And I get into the exam room and they've got the big light with like the eight lights and all these people leaning over me. And I'm just looking up going like, "This is like the POV shot from every fucking movie where somebody is in the hospital."
I'm like, "This is so fucking corny. Like, this is just the way they shoot it. All. This is just the way it always is. Right?" I was very disappointed that my experience was not unique. I felt like I was on an episode of ER or something, you know?
So, you know, many, many doctors come and go and tell me good things and bad things. Tom was there the whole time. The first thing I tell Tom is like, "You've got to get in touch with Guillermo because.. " He's like, "Scotty, the studio is shut down, dude. Come on. What are you talking about? Yeah, but Karen was supposed to be coming. I'm supposed to start his record tomorrow. You got to call him. Okay. Scotty. I'll do it. Just shut up."
So he knows that Guillermo, I know Guillermo through Vijay Iyer. So he called Vijay and, and Vijay got him in touch with Guillermo. And it turned out that Guillermo's college roommate was working on the trauma team and he was the doctor that was like our primary liaison with the trauma team for the first two weeks I was in the ICU, which was really good to have that kind of advocacy. The first person besides, you know, I see Tom and he's like sleeping in the corner on a chair.
And the next person that comes in, Vijay comes in with this big bag of jelly beans. He's like, "Yeah, man, like when something like this happens, it just throws you off. You just, you just grab what's ever by the door or whatever. And you know, I got to bring something." They brought a big bag of jelly beans.
We are hearing things from the doctors and the doctors are telling my friends things that they aren't telling me, you know, within a day or less, 12 hours, like everyone's there, like all my close friends and whatnot. It was a pretty intense show of support from people, and right after that, it was like a schedule made that somebody would be with me 24 hours a day in the ICU.
And eh, it was a pretty intense time. The doctors were never like, at the very first, they were like, "Well, yeah, you're paralyzed. You can't feel your legs, but it might be trauma, like it might come back." They were telling some of my friends this, and I kept telling them, "Don't tell my parents what's going on."
Cause it just felt like, A, I knew they would fucking freak out and my mother had a recurrence of cancer and I figured, well, they've got their problems and we didn't know yet, and I didn't want to say anything. Finally, my friend Hesak was like, "I couldn't hold your mother back off any longer. I had to tell her what was going on."
And I'm like, "Yeah", let's, you know, I, my mother gets on the phone with me and she's like, "And that Hesak." I said, "Mum, Hesak is the last person that you should be mad at. He's done more for me than anybody at this point. So those are my wishes that you guys didn't know right away what was going on because we didn't know, now it looks like it's for sure I'm going to be full paralyzed, but, you know, they said once the swelling came down, there might be, there was some hope." So we had a little bit of hope there for the first few days, but it was dashed rather quickly.
After a couple of days, the doctors did come through and say, "Yeah, it looks like it's irreversible. And that, you know, you completely crushed your T5 vertebrae. It's gone." It took almost a month to get the surgery. They put me in a brace after about a week and it was kind of like, “Can we heal this holistically or anything?”
And they're like, well, if you want to wear that brace for the rest of your life, which is this cage that basically choked me to death, it was really brutal. And then I had to keep wearing that cage for, I think, two months after the surgery, but they reconstructed my a T5 vertebrae. They put all the shattered bones in a little blender with, I don't know, little corn starch or something, maybe a little Elmer's glue.
And they, they just kind of refashioned it over a chicken wire or like, you know, a little mesh kind of like the way you would make a sculpture or something with the mesh chicken wire, and then you put like, papier-mâché over it. They kind of did that and they regrew my T5 vertebrae like that, but they fused from T3 to T6.
I have three titanium rods in my back and then my, my most recent physical therapist told me, “They took one of my ribs!” It's like in "The Pope of Greenwich Village", “They took my thumbs, they took my rib, they took my rib!” So I'm missing a rib on the left side and a lot of times when I have issues with my left to right stuff, and my PT, Chris, she'll say, "Well, I think that has a lot to do with you missing that rib."
So she's just, she's always pointing out that they, “Stole my rib! They took my rib!”
“I grew up right on there on the corner of Carmine and Bleecker right, with my rib.” Anyway, that's fucking chapter one.
Luz Fleming:
What’s up everybody? This is Luz, the producer of Yard Tales. I want to take a minute to ask you for a favor. A show like this takes a lot of time and effort to produce. We’re not a big team, it’s mostly just me. We don’t have any sponsors contributing money or influencing what I make or what I say.
This is independent media.
If that’s something you support, please help me to keep making this show and providing it to you for free by donating to Yard Tales. One dollar helps, but even if a small percentage of listeners gave the price of one of those bomb ass slices from Carmine’s Pizzeria, well… You get the idea. Just go to yardtales.live/donate and click on the button that says “Donate Now.” That’s yardtales.live/donate. Any amount is really appreciated. Thanks so much.
And now let’s get back to Scotty’s recovery and the new space he has to navigate in his life and in his career.
Scotty Hard:
I was talking to Raven, a guy from Digging Roots about the power of music and I got out of the hospital in early September of 2008. Moved into a non wheelchair accessible apartment, but we made it work. And while I was living there, my very good friends from Rio we're coming to BAM to do a Red Hot + Blue show.
And I had done a couple of records for Red Hot back in the day with MMW and Biz (Biz Markie) and Prince Paul did a song for that called I think the album was called "America Is Dying Slowly" or something that's kind of an AIDS benefit record. So Kassin (Alexandre Kassin), my friend Kassin was kind of, him and Mario Caldato were the musical directors, but you know, Kassin was leading the band with like a lot of other friends that I knew from Brazil and some other people that I didn't, but they were tangentially kind of affiliated.
And then a couple of singers from São Paulo that I knew. And Kassin said, "Oh, you know, I really want you to do this cause also I know we're going to be really busy and I just want to see you as much as I can, and this would be the best way." And I'm like, "Of course I can do it." And like, I don't mix live sound.
But I'm like, "Okay." And I was like, "Well, what's the deal?" And they're like, "Well, we get there, it's this sort of, you know, a lot of cover, it's all covers of different people." And he told me who all, everyone was in the band, all the singers. I knew most of them. And it's three days of rehearsal in the opera house and then an afternoon show.
And then two evening shows. I'm like, “All right, I'll do that.” Because like my frustration with doing live sound was always. You have like two hours to set up and you know, sometimes they have to erect a PA, but you know, sometimes they do, but you know, if not, you're walking into some room with a total crap fucking PA.
I'm like, well, three days of rehearsal, I think I not only feel okay about doing this, but you know, we'll, we'll be able to get it good. Cause that's a thing I like about making records is you can make it good. When you make, when you're doing live stuff, you can just make it happen.
When I was mixing the show and I was like, dubbing out all the vocals and doing all this stuff and I'm moving back and forth and I'm in the music and I'm like, I completely at that point forgot that I had been in an accident, I was in a wheelchair and that's the sort of power of music and that's why I keep doing it.
And that's why I do do it because, you know, I was, I don't believe I was given a gift or anything like that cause I worked my ass off to learn how to do this shit, but it's my passion. And it's something that means something to me and that's what I do. I work with people and I make music and I can't do it as many hours of the day as I used to.
But I mean, when you used to work 80 hours a week in the studio, battering your ears and liver, it's not a bad idea to slow down a bit. And I've had to learn how to do things a lot faster. I've developed a lot of techniques and just a lot of work habits to allow me to continue to work and, and, and not have to work those hours.
Plus, you know, digital recording and stuff makes it a lot easier and more streamlined to do things. It can also be a fucking albatross, but in general, it's been a, I think, a good development and for me as a disabled person and not having to work behind a 72 input console makes life a lot easier as well.
Yep. Continue to work, continue to do it. I got to, man. That's my legacy. My, my passion is what I bring to the world. So if I wasn't doing that and I guess I'd be just be drinking beer at three o'clock every day of the week, instead of just today.
But a couple of years ago, I'm like, "Fuck, I've made 40 records since I've been in the chair." And that was probably four years ago. So I, you know, count how many I've done since then. I don't know.
I think about three or four years ago, Raz Mesinai, and I, who was kind of a brilliant electronic music, composer, producer, and creator of art and an amazing guy. A great friend asked me about teaching and he had been teaching at Dubspot taught Ableton and DJ skills. It was a bit of a racket, which I've always thought. engineering schools were and Raz kind of defected from there. And he had been teaching also at the New School and then teaching other people privately, like anybody who was cool, who needed to learn Ableton it's like, Oh, Laurie Anderson needs to learn Ableton. You know, Raz would go teach them. So, and I had met him through Mike Ladd and actually I had never physically met him until he came to visit me when I was in the rehab hospital.
And he proposed this idea of the Underground Producers Alliance and, you know, with some other people that I knew, like HPrizm and Honeychild Coleman and Randall Dunn, and a bunch of, you know, luminaries. Todd Reynolds teaching strings and other kind of music, composition and Todd Krupa, teaching digital music production and whatnot. So it was a bunch of cool people.
You know, I had over the years, people talk to me about that many times and I'm like, “Okay, well, if you can get it together, man, I'm there, you know.” And he did, and I was, so we've developed several courses. The most recent is called Beyond The Beat with my good friend Prince Paul from "back in the day". Talking about hip hop production.
That's not just about making beats because we've been talking about that for 20, 25, 30 years ever since we've known each other about that, you know, producing a record, isn't just making a beat on an MPC because that's kind of the way it comes out in the hip hop world a lot. And obviously that's completely valid and necessary part of the process, but actually, you know, making a record and having concepts and doing all that stuff. I mean, he's the guy that invented the fucking hip hop skit. So he definitely has an idea about music production being very conceptual and being very sort of far reaching beyond just making beats.
So we had developed a course for that. Raz and I developed a course called Mixing The Hard Way. Basically, you know, we have a curriculum to teach how to mix music and I talk about my process, but it's not specific to my studio or to Pro Tools or to my DAW (digital audio workstation) it's just about talking about music.
And I think that was the thing that Raz found objectionable about Dubspot was they were just trying to sell software and hardware to people where, you know, we're just trying to teach people about music. I'm not trying to teach somebody about Pro Tools or how to use an MPC or something. I use those things to facilitate teaching the process and what kind of instruments and avenues people have to use to create music these days. So, we've been doing that and that's a you know can be found at upa.nyc and that's the Underground Producers Alliance where you can take any of my courses "Mixing The Hard Way", "Beyond The Beat", or "The Ghost Program", which is a comprehensive study of the all facets of the music business from buying records, making beats and radio promotion and mixing and overdubs and marketing and stuff.
It's, it's a very comprehensive look at what life is like, and what the avenues are for professional music production career.
Luz Fleming:
Thanks for sharing that story with us, Scotty. And thanks for showing us that life's biggest obstacles can still be overcome with style and grace and a hefty sense of humor. And thanks for always keeping it sesh, no matter what. And a couple of details about the accident that Scotty was in. It was not the fault of the car service driver.
Somebody ran a stop sign and t-boned into the car service that Scotty was in. After years of having the trial pushed back and postponed. Scotty won a multi-million dollar settlement in November of 2016 and won a subsequent fraud trial against the defendants as a result of their fraudulent actions.
But he has yet to see a penny of that money.
I recorded Scotty's story for Yard Tales on the traditional territory of the Lenape and Canarsie Nations or downtown Brooklyn. The rest of this episode was recorded and produced on the traditional territory of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh and Musqueam Nations, Vancouver BC. Thanks so much for joining us today.
If any listeners would like to learn more about Scott Harding or the Underground Producers Alliance, you can check him out at scottyhard.com or upa.nyc. Thanks to Scotty for letting us use some of his original music for this podcast.
Yard Tales is executive produced by Jacob Bronstein, Andy Outis is the design director, and production assistance by Davis Lloyd. Additional original music by myself and James Ash. Shout out to Andy Cotton for the dope theme music, thanks for letting me put a little remix on it for this show.
If you like Yard Tales, be sure to follow on Apple, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. And please use Apple Podcasts to rate and review Yard Tales because it really helps to point more listeners to the show. You can find more information, images, and additional audio at yardtales.live and check us out on Instagram @yardtales and Facebook @yardtalespodcast. If you want to leave feedback or reach out for any reason, send an email to info@yardtales.live.
Be sure to tune in next week for a special Halloween episode, where we visit the campus of Bennington College in Southern Vermont and hear stories exploring the boundaries around the living and the dead, the unexplained and the paranormal. It is both a school yard and a grave yard tale.
Sibyl Kempson:
And he said, “Oh, in Brazil when you see fruit flies gathered like that on a particular wall, it means that there is a ghost there.
Alex Pintair:
It was this skinny tail, white body, of a ten year old boy essentially, and then the head was the skull of a goat.
Kate Brandt:
yeah it’s so weird, it’d be like this dark gloom that would descend and this feeling of a shared madness that seemed really widespread, at a given time we’d say oh it’s the dome of insanity.
Lisa Sciandra:
Yeah, that’s the most haunted room in the whole building. I was wondering if you were going to pick up on it.
Shawnette Sulker:
Sure but like I don’t know how to explain the slime on my jacket.
Luz Fleming:
And if you're still listening, that means you might've had a connection to Yard Tales and maybe you have a Yard Tale of your own that you want to tell. If, so, go to yardtales.live/callinyardtales for detailed instructions on how to do so. If we dig your story, we’ll feature it in a future episode.
And now we’ll let the homie ABUSE ONE dive into his Pier 39 bus yard tale.
Tony “Abuse” Rivera
My name is Tony Rivera and I used to tag ABUSE when I was younger and this is my Yard Tale. It happened in 1988. It was at the Pier 39 yards. Pier 39 is one of the hugest tourist attractions in San Francisco.
And it was a Friday night. Every Friday night me and my buddies would go down there. It was MENT, and BIZNIS, MISTERY, we were a little crew. I don't think we ever had an official name for each other, but we always hung out and we always destroyed together and Pier 39 was, was one of our favorite places to go.
It was pretty lax on security, but it was a busy yard. It had fencing on three sides, but there was a main entrance that you could just walk in and we did that one Friday night and then after about 20 minutes of writing, somebody spotted us, the security guard. And he chased us out of there and we split all directions and me and BIZNIS left the yard.
We ran across the street. They had these lineups of buses and right next to the lineups with these bushes that you could hide in. We went and we hid in those bushes. But, and does the security guard know about it? And he went to those bushes and started rummaging around, trying to find us, he shook us loose.
And he seen us run away through the parking garage and shouted, "I got you now!" And he started chasing us and chased us all the way through the parking garage, out into the main boulevard, through Pier 39, which was full of tourists who found the whole thing pretty interesting. So as we kept on running I noticed that the pier was ending and, you know, 15 years old, you're pretty fearless and foolish.
So I just heaved myself over the railings and BIZNIS being a junior writer at the time, he just did the same thing and we just went deep into the water. Fully clothed and then bobbed up and swam underneath the deck where he couldn't see us, but we sure heard him. He was livid. He was shouting at us.
He was telling us he was going to get us and we were in for quite a beating when we got out of there. And so we just kept swimming and it was, it was completely dark underneath. It was just us and some clams and mussels, starfish here and there. And then we swam for what amounted to a couple of blocks until we came to a, a derelict pier.
Back in the eighties, there was a lot more of those and we scaled it. And as we were climbing out, we could see the police starting to show up and just sorta crept away. Sopping wet, got ourselves on a bus about a six or ten blocks away from there. And of course, people are looking at us. It wasn't raining.
It was, I think, it was early, early in the school year. So that would've put it at September, October. Nice weather. Anytime to jump into the Bay at night, it would be September, October, and you know, we took the bus home. I think I told a couple people about it. And then within a week, the whole city knew it.
And every time I saw somebody new, they, they asked me about it and we had a good laugh. And it was, it was good material that ran for a couple of years. I mean, after that, it was history and that is my Yard Tale.