Carol Sun

SULLIVAN: All right.

SUN: Does it sound okay?

SULLIVAN: Mm-hmm.

SUN: Good.

SULLIVAN: All right. Yeah. [inaudible]

SUN: I was just curious at the equipment. Don't mind me.

SULLIVAN: Oh, yeah, yeah. No, have a look.

SUN: Yeah. The digital world of microphones.

SULLIVAN: Okay.

SUN: So I just talk in a normal tone.

SULLIVAN: Mm-hmm.

SUN: Okay.

SULLIVAN: I'll take these off.

SUN: Okay.

SULLIVAN: All right. So, actually --

SUN: Should -- do -- should I wait for you to prompt me, and then I'll start, and then -- or just --

SULLIVAN: Yeah. So I'm just going to -- I'll slate the interview, so --

SUN: Okay.

SULLIVAN: -- which is helpful for the archivists of the future. Hello, archivists of the future. Today is Sunday, June 4, 2017. I'm Sady Sullivan. This interview is for Brooklyn Historical Society. We are recording here at Brooklyn Historical Society on Pierpont Street. And now, if you would, introduce yourself to the recording.

SUN: Hi. My name is Carol Sun, S-U-N. I was -- I am a native New Yorker. I was 1:00born and raised in the north Bronx. I was born in 1958. My parents immigrated from -- well, wait, let me take that back. My parents came to the United States in 1947 to attend graduate schools. My mom went to Yale graduate school of architecture. She was one of the first women to be part of the school. And my father came to study electrical engineering at Cornell, in Ithaca. And due to the civil war in China, when they graduated from school, they were not allowed to return to China, and they found themselves as homeless refugees in New York City. And they met, and they fell in love -- I think -- [laughter] and got married, and settled in the Kingsbridge/Fordham Hill area of the Bronx. I am the 2:00middle child. I am the wicked middle child. I have an older brother and a younger brother. My older brother and my younger brother are both rocket scientists.

SULLIVAN: They actually are? I mean --

SUN: Yes. They are actually rocket scientists.

SULLIVAN: [laughter] Wow.

SUN: My older brother works for -- he recently retired from working at Boeing as an optical laser rocket scientist. And my little brother is a division manager for NASA out in California.

SULLIVAN: Wow.

SUN: So I truly -- I come from a family of architects and engineers, and I am the lone ranger artist, and now educator. So I grew up in a very unusual place for a Chinese family, at the time, because there were very few Chinese-Americans in New York City, and a handful of people from Shanghai, so that was kind of akin to my parents being from New York City, and everybody else being from 3:00Florida, who were Chinese. So anyway. So we were ducks out of water. I grew up, and my neighborhood, at the time, was Irish and Italian, so that was kind of hard, and very harsh, as immigrant children. But I think it instilled a level of tenacity and survival mentality, and independence, that actually helped me to become a creative person. And I ended up going to Music & Art High School, which is now known as LaGuardia, and I studied art. I had originally applied to go there to also study dance, and I got in for that, but not many opportunities for a Chinese dancer -- Chinese ballet dancers in the '60s and the '70s. So off I went to Music & Art, studied art, and then at the age of seventeen, I graduated, 4:00and I went to Cooper Union, in the East Village, and continued my studies in the arts. And moved out of my house when I was eighteen, to the East Village. And after two years in the -- no, I'm sorry. After a year in the East Village, where the housing was incredibly cramped and out of date, I moved to Brooklyn, first to Park Slope, then later over where Barclays Center is now, to a loft. That was in, probably, 1974. And it was not a happy experience. It was, like, a really terrible neighborhood, and I wasn't very comfortable, so --

SULLIVAN: Terrible in -- in -- in what way, do you mean?

SUN: It was really isolated, and the space that I lived in was occupied by this 5:00Japanese woman, and it was huge, and she wanted to rent this tiny little room. And it was interesting as an artist, but the house was filled -- was filled with -- it didn't have any light, and it had a dog that shed a lot, so there was, like, dog hair everywhere, and that kind of -- that, and the fact that it was right off of Flatbush, and -- I don't even know what name -- was it -- Dean Street. It was very unpleasant and kind of scary street. So I didn't like it. It didn't have any warmth, so I only stayed there for a couple of months. Then I moved in with my boyfriend, into an apartment on Hicks Street, in the basement of a very narrow townhouse that was next to the Hicks Deli. Tiny, tiny apartment. It was just a little bit wider than a full size bed.

SULLIVAN: Wow, yeah.

SUN: So it was tiny. My boyfriend, who was also an artist and another student at Cooper Union, knew that the waterfront area was full of artists, and when we grad-- when we were getting ready to graduate from Cooper, we decided we were going to live together, and we were going to look for a space to occupy and do our artwork in. So Jeff and I went down to Dumbo. We posted signs on the doors of the buildings that we deduced were occupied. You could tell that -- well, actually, let me -- let me stop for a second here, and just pause, and frame, what was Dumbo like, and what was the city like at the time. New York City was suffering from a big recession, and there were no jobs. There were very few 7:00jobs, or not a lot of work. I think this was, like, right around the time of Jimmy Carter, so it was, like, 1974. So the waterfront was largely occupied by a few remaining manufacturing businesses, people who did printing, some light manufacturing, like, creating material. Like there was a spice factory in Dumbo. There was a pla-- there was a plastics factory, where they made extruded plastic. They made burlap bags. So there were scattered kinds of businesses on the waterfront. The buildings were very derelict. Lots of broken windows, a lot of dirty buildings, trash on the street. I remember going to look at lofts in 8:00Williamsburg, underneath the Bridge, right off of Broadway, and the streets there were littered with crack vials and needles, whereas Dumbo was littered with trash. There was a smell in the air that was comprised of scents that were from coffee grindings, spice milling, plastic extruding, gum tape being made, so it was this, like, kind of sweet but kind of smoky smell. And there was -- there seemed to be this, like, layer of dust that came -- or, I don't even want to say dust. Probably erosions from the Bridge that came off the Manhattan Bridge. But Dumbo was pretty empty. It was busy during the day with factory workers, who 9:00would go in and out of the garment factories or the printing houses, but after, like, five o'clock, Monday through Friday -- no, four o'clock on Monday to Friday, they were gone. So -- and the streets were basically empty. No cars. Just empty. And these old buildings. So you could always tell where the artists were living, because the were the only buildings that had all these old cars of various shapes and forms, like station wagons and pickup trucks, parked outside some buildings. And you could hear music, or you would see plants, or -- you'd see little evidence. So Jeff and I actually rode around on our bicycles. You would take a piece of eight-and-a-half/eleven paper, and write -- and you would make a sign that was handwritten, not -- no com-- there were no computers at 10:00that time. Make little tabs at the bottom of the paper with your phone number, so people could read your sign and then pull your number off the sign. And our sign said something like, "Nice young artist couple, recent graduates of Cooper Union, looking for loft to rent." Very simple. So I think we put the sign up at, like, five buildings. And where I lived on Washington Street, someone actually answered the ad, and we went over to take a look at the space. And it was a very appropriate space for us, because it was big enough for both of us to have a studio that was about 500 square feet for each one of us, and then --

SULLIVAN: Wow.

SUN: -- we would live in the front. It had a kitchen and a bathroom set up 11:00already, so we could move in. And it cost the princely sum of $5000 in a "fee," quote unquote, that was for the fixtures -- and I'll get back into that -- and the princely sum of $400 a month, which, today, seems -- it's like that would be the cost of your cable bill and your phone bill, but $400 a month to a graduating college student in 1979 was a lot of money, because you only made, like, maybe $200 a week. So that was -- it was a lot of money. Or -- yeah. It was -- it was a lot of money. So -- but we were very determined young artists, and the place certainly fit our romantic idea of getting out of college and 12:00starting our career as professional artists. So I moved into Washington Street. My space was a hundred feet long by twenty feet wide. It had thirteen- or fourteen-foot high ceilings and all these windows, and you could look out the window, and you could see the -- the stone structure of the Manhattan Bridge. So it was very dramatic, and it had a lot of light. And the building was already occupied. There were about -- let's see. From what I understand, the building was occupied till -- from probably about 1974. It was -- it's about six stories high, six very tall stories high. It's made from brick with wooden beams that go across the floor. Let's see. Wooden floors. There's a freight elevator. The 13:00building's probably -- each floor is probably about 6000 square feet. And then there's a basement. So -- the building is located within the Gair complex. And it was p-- we think it was primarily used for printing, and possibly some sewing. The reason why I say it probably had some sewing is because, throughout the years, I would find endless safety pin-- not safe-- push pins, T-pins, and sewing pins, tucked away between the floorboards. But anyway, so, the building was occupied since 1974 by artists, and sort of outliers, probably because most manufacturers were not able to -- would not be interested in renting that 14:00building, because the building was not suited for certain kinds of manufacturing, because it was -- the way the electrical was set up, and so forth. So a lot of factories -- I know a lot of manufacturing businesses left New York around that time, because it was cheaper to set up business in more modern spaces in, like, New Jersey, or so forth, or they just went out of business. But anyway. So there was this dearth of -- of empty industrial space, light manufacturing space, in the area, and so the landlords found themselves renting to artists who were looking for cheap spaces. So typically what would happen is a pers-- one group would take over the lease for an entire floor, and 15:00then they would subdivide it, and sort of become the floor-lord, and charge enough rent so they didn't have to pay rent for their own space. So that was kind of typical. Not everyone did that, but pretty common. So my building had -- every floor was occupied except the first and the second floor -- I mean, I'm sorry. The first floor and the basement were manufacturing, and the other floors were all artists or outliers, like I said. The space -- my space had been previously occupied by some students from Pratt. One was a ceramicist, and I think the other was a painter, and their marriage broke up, or something like that, and that's how I got the space. But I found myself living in a building with a furniture designer, a TV producer, a Japanese immigrant who was also an 16:00artist, named Ando. Let's see. Who was on the f-- there were some other young couples who were from manufact-- from Massachusetts, and they were musicians, and a gymnast. So the building was very lively, and, I would say, it was easy to develop friendships with people, because it was like living on an-- on your own little planet. You were very isolated. There were no stores. There was no -- almost no place, real-- there was really no place to get food at night, although there was a bar. But basically you were isolated. So if you were cooking and you needed something, you would knock on your neighbor's door, and see if they had, 17:00you know, cooking oil, salt, or a pepper, or an onion. If you had a party, everybody knew, and everybody came. We would borrow each others' ladders or get involved in helping each other design and improve our spaces. So it was a very fun and a, kind of, exciting place to be. We also were -- like I said, it was like a -- on your own planet, but also kind of like the Wild West. So we also took care of each other in terms of crime, and vandalism, and -- always helping each other out. So -- I think I need to take a pause for a moment.

SULLIVAN: Yeah.

SUN: Yeah. Okay.

SULLIVAN: That's fine. This is great.

SUN: Great? Okay.

SULLIVAN: Yeah.

SUN: So, let's see. [inaudible] I'm trying to think, some things that I could 18:00point out, what the area was like. So [inaudible] -- when I moved in, the first week I moved in, which was, I would say, September 1979. So that was two months after -- three months after I graduated from Cooper. So we moved in. The waterfront edge looked like desolated piers, decaying piers. The area by the Empire Stores, when you looked at the -- where the park is, was just a giant green space that was kind of blocked off. The Empire Stores were closed off and abandoned, almost abandoned. One Main Street had a giant, four-foot in -- 19:00four-foot diameter pipe that went down the side of the building on Water Street, and was the vent for the gum paper tape factory. Cobbled stones were very rockity [sic]. The Gair buildings had a -- a walkway between them, that was probably about two or three stories above the ground level. And like I said before, a lot of the windows were broken, and so forth. The -- the building where Smack Mellon is right now housed these giant furnaces, or mechanical pieces, and those buildings, the windows were broken, and kind of like that. And the lot at the end of my street, at the end of Washington Street, which is, like, one of the entrances to the park now, was a dump. And there was a little 20:00city building. And there was a dead body in the doorway of one of the buildings, with its hands -- the per-- the poor person had been bound and gagged, and was dead. So that was my first week in Dumbo.

SULLIVAN: Oh, that was your first week. Oh, gosh. [laughter] Oh.

SUN: Yeah. But, like -- but, like -- let me just say this. Like, I know that sounds really awful and dangerous, but it wasn't as bad as you might think, because, like, for the most part, there were no dead bodies, but every now and then something would show up. But, like, you would see -- if something bad was going to happen, you would see it, because the streets were literally empty. Like, you know, four o'clock came, Friday. All the factories shut down. And the only people left were the artists, with their pickup trucks, and their dogs, and their beer parties, and their dance parties, and their art stuff. So there was 21:00nothing there, so if somebody was going to do something bad, you certainly would have seen it. And when the bad things did happen -- like, you know, there were gang fights, or whatever -- you kind of knew -- you had common sense. Like, oh, there's something going on there. I think I'll stay inside, or whatever. So -- but it was like -- we used to call it, it was like the Wild West, I would say. But -- did I -- I didn't -- I wasn't terrified of going out at night, but I would go out with my boyfriend, or later my husband. And eventually we had a car, or a pickup truck, or a motorcycle, or something, but --desolate, because the factory workers went home, was a lot better than, for example, Williamsburg, where I had looked, which had crack vials on the street. And that -- that was more disturbing. So I chose desolate streets and dead bodies over crack vials, 22:00so -- But I think it was a good choice, because the nice thing about Dumbo, it was really close to the city. It was very easy to go into Manhattan. You'd just get in the car. You'd be across the bridge into Chinatown in ten minutes. And you could just park anywhere. It was kind of fantastic. I think nobody would believe [laughter] it existed, thinking about what it's like right now. But anyway, so -- so my space was renovated by hippie carpenters. [laughter] So it kind of looked like hobbit world for part of it. It was made by -- it was made with a lot of wood and found objects, and, like, railroad ties, and wood stumps, and things like that. But it suited our needs, and it worked for our studios. 23:00I'm going to kind of -- I'll go through the personal thing, and then I'll come back to the Dumbo thing. So I would say -- so I lived there with my boyfriend for a year, and then we broke up, and he moved on. And I had a roommate, who also lives in Brooklyn Heights now. But I had a roommate. And then it was the roommate, her boyfriend, and my boyfriend, who became my husband. Then I got married in 1982, I would say. And -- and in a way, it was very much the Dumbo wedding, because we got married on the music barge.

SULLIVAN: Oh, nice.

SUN: Because I knew Olga from the music barge and realized something was going on there, and that it was a nice place. And so I naively asked her one night. I 24:00said, "Olga, I want to get married on the barge." And she said, "You can't afford it." [laughter] And I -- I think I frowned or something, and then she laughed, and said, "Oh, but you could get married here if you do it on a night we don't have anything going on." So it turned out to be a Monday night, which was, like, the first day of summer, which was what we wanted. So we got married there. We had a potluck wedding. And something that was kind of cool was that some people wandered by, wondered what was going on, and they found out about the music barge, and thought the party was great, and they gave the barge all this money that night. Like, they got some giant donation, so it was kind of nice. But it was very sweet to get married on the barge when it was just, like, kind of, in its infancy. And it was down the street from where we lived, so it was kind of cool. But anyway, I lived -- I have lived in my loft my entire adult 25:00life. I am now fifty-nine years old, so I've lived there for thirty-eight years. So it's kind of been a very interesting place to be a creative person and be in that space. And the space has gone through a lot of transformations. As Dumbo has transformed, it has transformed, and I have also changed. I have evolved. We've all evolved. My building is one of the few buildings that were original artist spaces that actually became a condominium that was started by the artists. So in that sense, we were a success story, that we were able to survive all the changes, and create economic security for the people that lived there, 26:00or some economic benefit for the people who are there. So I'm going to give a little background about the artists living in Dumbo, and the whole political piece about the lofts and real estate. So it is true in New York City that everything comes down to real estate. The Indians gave up Manhattan. They lost the biggest real estate of the deal, but that saga continues every day. So artists were no different. We found artists are very entrepreneurial, and discovered that there was cheap space. Cheap space for artists equals opportunity to make your work. Cheap space across the river from the city, this 27:00fantastic landscape of urban detris [sic], lots of inspiration, the bridge, the water, the humming of the city. The political life of the city at that time, a lot of struggle, a lot of people trying to get jobs, to climb out from this recession, and so forth. So I would say there were about 250 artists in Dumbo. Some were very smart and paid attention to the politics, and some also just, like, you know, benefited from the artists who were savvy. So in my building, there were two brothers, Crane Davis and Monte Davis. They lived on the top floor. Both very -- very unique people. So Crane had been the producer on channel 13, had a show called The Fifty-First State. Former Marine Corps press 28:00officer. Crane understood the politics of the world. He could see that, in Dumbo, a case needed to be made for creating a community and banding together with the businesses in the area to create some political interest in the area. And in the long term, I think his goal was to create awareness in the politicians that, here's this whole group of constituents who you represent, who've been driving this economic engine. So Crane started the Fulton Ferry Landing -- oh God, what was it called? Fulton F-- it was either Two Bridges or Fulton Ferry, but it was a local development corporation. So Crane -- Crane started that. And in the meantime, his brother Monte -- also very smart. Science writer, very smart man, and great runner. Monte started to try to motivate the 29:00artists to form a group called the Brooklyn Loft Tenants. So between the two groups, kind of align-- forming some kind of alliance with each other, or parallel movement, they were able to get Pratt -- they had our -- I want to say urban studies group, or urban development group -- to look at the area and see how artists were actually their own small manufacturer. And so that created the momentum that we were able to go to the city council and become part of the Loft Law, the existing Loft Law [1982 Loft Law]. So -- I'm sorry. It's been many years, so I don't remember all the precise regulations about the Loft Law, but basically, if you had three or more units, and you had been there prior to a 30:00certain date, you could become part of the Loft Law. The Loft Law said that even though the landlord had rented commercial space to an artist, he had to change the certi-- he had to do the work to change the certificate of occupancy of the building from manufacturing to residential, because, in fact, the artists were living there, and by the fact that the landlords had accepted all this money for all these years, and they knew that the artists were living there, he was complicit -- or he/she was complicit, and had to bring the building up to residential code. So of course, the landlords were incensed by this idea, and 31:00our landlord -- his name was Jerry Rachman. He was the proud owner of Rachman Ba-- Burlap Bag Company, which was at 81 Pearl Street, and we'll get back into Jerry Rachman. But our landlord did not want to renovate our building. And unfortunately, Jerry was, kind of, a very poor businessman. He was a bit of a character, like out of a Sam Spade novel. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but Jerry was a man of another era. He wore trench coats, porkpie hats, had a bouffant hairdo. He had an assistant named Mona. Mona looked like Miss -- if you could imagine Miss Piggy as a zaftig, middle-aged woman who had once been 32:00very beautiful, but still dyed her hair and put it up in curls, and -- Anyway, there was Jerry and Mona and the burlap bag company. And they had -- Jerry had an assistant named Louie [phonetic]. Louie was, kind of, like, your hobo-wino. A man of mixed breed who lived in Harlem. I could never tell if he was black or Latino, or if he was a mix, or what was he, or was he black and white? I don't know. But he was a little guy, very wiry, and he was, like, Jerry's go-to guy. Like, go pick up the garbage; go run this errand, that kind of thing. So then there was Jerry. Anyway, Jerry didn't want to pay to renovate the building and Jerry also -- but at the same time, Jerry's bag manufacturing business was waning. You know, not a big need for burlap bags as we moved into the years 33:00there. So Jerry didn't really have a lot of money, and because of what the Loft Law said, about the landlord had to bring the building up to code, we stopped paying rent. We put our rent money in an escrow account, and we said, "Hey, Jerry. The money's there for you, and -- but you need to fulfill y-- what the law says that you need to do, which is bring the building up to code." So the bank account, the escrow account, was kind of like our big bargaining chip. So there were many conversations with Jerry. Like, we would say, "Jerry, why don't we buy the building from you? Let us take this responsibility off of you. We live here. You don't need the building. Let us buy it." So on Monday, we would have a discussion, and Tuesday he would agree, fifty cents a square foot. And 34:00we'd say, "Great, fifty cents a square foot." We'd walk away. Then by Wednesday, Jerry would call up, and say, "No, I want seventy-five cents." So the deal never sealed. Never. So this went on. So eventually, it went to a grinding halt, and the money sat in the escrow account, and Jerry wasn't getting the money, and he was losing money. So Jerry decided to make a deal with the devil. He found some other new immigrants, somewhere along the line. I think we found out they were Iranian, or something like that. And the bought Jerry's story about the building and gave him a bunch of money. Jerry spent the money on something else. I don't know what, but he spent the money. So now he owed the Iranians money, and he had this building that he wasn't getting any money from. So then he borrowed money from Charlie Cara [phonetic] Sr., who owned parking lots in Brooklyn. Parking 35:00lots make a lot of cash. This is before debit cards and swiping. People paid a lot of cash. So the Caras owned a lot of parking lots. They owned the parking lot at 100 J Street. They owned the parking lots, several parking lots in the area. So Jerry owed -- went to Charlie for money, got money from Charlie, and Jerry also stopped paying the taxes on the building. So kind of a big mess. And what happens in New York City if you stop paying your building's taxes? The city seizes your building. So lo and behold, we found ourselves with a new landlord, and that was New York City under Mayor Giuliani. Ta-da. [laughter] It was a very 36:00interesting moment. So that probably was about 19-- 1988? Or so? I'm sorry. I don't -- don't remember all my dates. So anyway, it was Giuliani time. They owned the building. Does the city really want to own a loft building? The answer is, no, they do not. Illegal tenants, bring it up to code, city does not want to spend the money on it. So Crane, Monte, very smart, comes up with this idea, we need to -- this whole group of people. Debbie [phonetic] Masters, myself. We're going to start becoming better friends with the politicians. This is where all the work and effort that we had done for Brooklyn Loft Tenants, and Pratt, and 37:00so forth, came very handy. So we went to our city councilman, who at the time was Ken Fisher. One of the loft tenants in the area, Debbie -- Debbie Masters, who used to live at 223 Water Street, worked for Ken Fisher. Very handy. Ken Fisher recognized that the tenants in the building really should have the first opportunity to buy the building from the city. And we also recognized that we needed a special kind of lawy-- lawyer, so -- oh God. What's the name of our lawyer? I might have to -- let's see. It'll come to me. Oh my God. [laughter] I can't believe I forgot his name.

SULLIVAN: Oh, it's okay. It'll --

SUN: So anyway, we got these amazing lawyers who had designed the Greenpoint 38:00Manufacturing Center. Oh, I can't -- [inaudible]. I can't remember their names right now.

SULLIVAN: It'll -- it'll pop up.

SUN: It'll pop u--

SULLIVAN: It'll come to you, yeah.

SUN: Okay. All right. Anyway, so through our lawyers and Ken Fisher, we crafted a deal with the city to buy our building. The building, of cour-- the city, of course, because it was Giuliani time, and because David Walentas had already started buying up property in Dumbo, wanted to sell the building to Walentas and not the tenant. But the city council told HPD [Department of Housing Preservation and Development] that they had to sell it to the tenants, or they would squash any real estate sales until they sold it to us. So then the city came back to us and said, "Well, that being the case, we want cash. We want 39:00$800,000 cash for your building." Okay. Today, in 2017, that's peanuts. You can't even buy a one-bedroom apartment in Dumbo for a million dollars. So -- but $800,000 in 1990 was a princely sum. So we went to Charlie Cara Jr., and told him of our situation, and he agreed to become our partner. And so he was able -- Charlie got the empty loft spaces in our building, and the remaining tenants that were there were able to buy their spaces. So we went back to the city and said, "Here's your $800,000, and thank you very much." And we got to buy the building. So we bought the building. We were -- let's see. We were a 40:00corporation. Then we became a co-op. And then we became a condo. And through that whole process -- and we also got our C-of-O [Certificate of Occupancy]. But I would say that as artist-owned building, we are probably the only one in Dumbo that was able to accomplish it. There were five buildings in Dumbo that were artist buildings. There was 31 Washington, 81 Pearl, 39 Pearl, 41 Pearl, 220 Water, and 223 Water Street -- oh, and 57 Front Street. Those were all the loft buildings. I mean, you literally -- you knew where everybody lived. So anyway, we were very fortunate, and we brought the building up to code. Right now, in 41:002017, there are only three of the original fourteen -- there were fourteen -- wait. I'm sorry. There were fourteen spaces in my building -- or originally, there were fourteen spaces in my building. When we bought the building, I would say, only half of them were owner -- were the original tenants, and those were the people who benefited from the sale and could buy it, buy their spaces. And then the other remaining spaces went to Charlie, who also got to purchase the first floor and the basement, because he put up all the work, and the money. Today, in 2017, there are only three of us left, and only two of us actually 42:00live there. The other person doesn't even live there. But everybody else is of the gentrification population that moved in. So they're very successful businesspeople, for the most part. There is another artist, but she came in after we purchased the building. So kind of different. Let's see. What else could I say about all that? The --

SULLIVAN: I'd love to hear more description of what this -- of that gentrification generation, like, what kind of -- you know, what's the culture of the building like now, and what kind of work are those people doing? Sort of what's -- more about that.

SUN: Okay. So I'm going to say that, to me, living in Dumbo for all this time, I would say that there were four big changes in the community. So when I first 43:00moved there, there were the -- the manufac-- the hardcore manufacturing spaces, like the sweatshops, the printing places, and all that, were there, but they were diminishing, and there were artists living side by side with them. Not too much of a conflict, but side-by-side living. Then the artists -- not all the artists got to say, because they failed to meet the Loft Law rules. And also, the art scene in New York changed, and the prices in Dumbo started to go up. So there was a transition phase, where Walentas bought the Gair buildings from Helmsley-Spear, and started changing the kinds of businesses in the building, 44:00not renewing the same kinds of leases to the manufacturers, but actually renting to artists, small businesses, small hands-on kinds of businesses like upholsterers, other artists, scenic design companies, silk screening, fashion companies, that kind of thing, those kinds of businesses. And then the New York City Department of Labor took over the Gair -- One Main Street. The tape facto-- tape manufacturing business left, and One Main started beco-- became the Department of Labor. And that, to me, was kind of a sweetheart deal that actually occurred between Mario Cuomo Sr. and Mr. Walentas, and -- I forget. 45:00There was this, like, big economic push to, kind of, like, bring people to start looking at the waterfront differently. So that's why the Department of Labor ended up there. But literally, there was a b-- a city bus that would come to One Main Street, bring the workers there, in and out of the neighborhood. And the workers there were very, very annoyed, because they were just coming from the World Trade Center. So, I guess, at the time there was this philosophy of moving the Department of Labor around to, kind of, build a economic center in neighborhoods that were just starting out. So anyway. So there was the time where Walentas started to, like, change the businesses. There were fires in buildings next to me, which we thought were very suspicious, because it was 46:00right after Walentas had bought the building, and the fire would essentially end the lease of the people that were there, and they moved out. So that was, like, the second phase. And then the third phase was when One Main Street actually became a residential building, and it was -- Main Street and, I want to say, 40 Main. I think that's the number. Or 38 Main. The Sweeney Building. And those became condos. So those were, like, kind of like, the first condos in the neighborhood. So the other manufacturing businesses that Walentas owned, he would, like, take the businesses out of One Main and 38 Main, and push them into the other buildings, so kind of consolidating. There was a school across the street from me at that time, too. A school for kids with learning disabilities. 47:00So anyway, so the neighborhood started to change. Less manufacturing, more white-collar businesses, and so forth. And the new condominium owners. And I want to say, like, the people who moved into Dumbo at that time to buy homes, they were big risk takers. And they actually, I think, were kind of interesting people, because they were much more adventurous, and they were actually pretty friendly, and like I said, kind of out there, because, like, why would you move down to Dumbo? Because there was still -- basically it was nothing. Oh, maybe there was -- Peas and Pickles had come. But -- and the pizza parlor had started to evolve a little bit. But there still wasn't a lot of stuff going on down there. Still very inconvenient, and kind of dirty, still. And then, I would say, the fourth phase now is, like, any building that could have been converted into 48:00a co-op or a condo -- condo, not co-op. There are very few co-ops. Condo -- that phase is almost done. And so now the people moving in are more well-heeled, six figures, families, kids, predominantly white. It's a little -- a little colorful, but not really. And now, I guess, the fifth phase, w-- especially with the development of Brooklyn Bridge Park, is the ridiculous amount of tourists that populate the neighborhood. And I will say this, like, as someone who's lived there for a long time. I could deal with all the t-- people living there now. I can deal with all the tech workers and stuff like that. But the -- the 49:00onslaught of tourists is just really so harsh on living, to the people that live there, because, really, it's like there's, like, no -- there's no space. So when I moved there, like I said, there w-- it was very, very quiet. You heard every car going down the street. You knew every car that was parked on the street. You could tell who was home. If there was a street sign put up on the street, and we didn't like it, we went out with the Sawzall, and we cut it down, and we threw it in the river. [laughter] That's what we did. I had a -- my husband at the time was into motorcycles. We had three motorcycles in our loft. We used to take -- we had a giant ramp that we chained to the front of my building, that was, like, twenty feet long, and we would roll the motorcycles up the ramp and into our freight elevator, and into the building. You know, like, there were so many 50:00things that you could do, and find, and have freedom for. Like, I used to have a giant Chinese new year's party, and we -- you could climb out my studio window, which was broken glass, onto the rooftop, to the buildings next to me, of Mendelson [phonetic] Paper, which no longer exists, but these low-lying buildings. And we would go out on the roof in February and blow off fireworks. Like, there were so many amazing things you could do and see. And it really was this great place to be an artist and incubate, and percolate, and do things in your studio, and paint, and weld, and, you know, grind metal, pour steel. I mean -- not pour steel. Pour glass. Like, there were just -- it was really ripe like that. And Dumbo now is -- it's the twenty-first century. It's the big tech 51:00piece. It's a big tourist piece. It's a completely different flavor. It doesn't have the heart like it used to. The only people I talk -- talk to in the neighborhood now are the people who have dogs, that I know from being a dog owner. And being a dog owner and walking around Dumbo for 30 years of having a dog -- different dogs in my life, like, I -- like, the edge of Dumbo is gone today. It used to have this incredible edge that was next to the river, and the pulse of the river, you know, was this, like, amazing thing. Like, I remember going underneath the Brooklyn Bridge with motorcycles, or, you know, just wandering around and finding things, finding people there. But every piece of Dumbo now has been cleaned, washed, and it's, like, Disney, you know. So it's -- 52:00it's a li-- a little much. I mean, I think it's more because of the tourism. It's not just the business. You know, I think the tech businesses are appropriate -- I don't want to say replacement, but lineage -- for what went on in Dumbo. And -- because there's a lot of creativity that has to go into it. But, like, I don't know if there's a heart anymore. Or maybe I'm not part of that -- I don't think I'm part of the Dumbo community in that way. I'm not -- having once been the heart and the birth of the neighborhood, right now I feel like I'm an outsider -- I'm a total outsider, you know. I'm a teach-- I'm an educator. I work with people -- I work with the public -- in the public school system. I use my creative skills as a -- to teach kids about visual thinking, 53:00but also as a workforce developer. I'm primarily that, because I feel like the -- the social -- the economic divide in the city is really heartbreaking. I -- I am an immigrant. I am a native New Yorker. I'm first generation. My parents came to the city with a great education, but they had very little economic foothold, and they built a life. And they could live in a neighborhood and have decent schools for their kids. My mother stayed home till I was, like, fifteen or so. But my mom stayed home, and she only left home to go to work because of her own choice, not because of any economic need. We had a modest lifestyle, but we had 54:00what we need, and my mom could stay home, and we could go to school, and we could have a decent place to live. I grew up in Mitchell-Lama housing.

SULLIVAN: Oh, awesome. Yeah.

SUN: So that no longer exists in the city, but that was a way for us to get a nice home on something that my parents could afford. But I work as -- I went from being an artist. I had a pretty good run as a career. I have -- I have pieces at the Bronx Museum. I have two public art commissions, one from the MTA, and one from Percent for Art for the public schools. So I have a big window stained glass piece up in the Bronx. I have ten stained glass windows at the 167th Street train station on the number four line. And then at PS 16 out in Corona, Queens, I have a big mosaic piece. But my -- my heart as an artist was 55:00very much about looking at lost narratives of people who are hidden. I am hidden. I am a woman. I am Asian American. I was hidden. We were unseen, and there are a lot of unseen people, but they are even more unseen people now. And I teach those children -- I work at a school called MECA, Manhattan Early College for Advertising, and we're a new version of college and high school kind of put together. We're one of the P-TECH schools. But why do I say this? Because, like, I went from being an artist, wanting to make social change, and I -- I went through a lot of personal transformation living in Dumbo. I was married. My husband got very sick and he died, and when he got sick, it really forced my hand into change. It was a -- it was the same -- everyth-- I -- I 56:00wil-- let me backtrack and say this. When 9/11 happened -- or the year 2001 was a very traumatic year for me. It started with my father dying, and losing the design job that I loved the most. I didn't mention this before, but I -- even though I was an artist, I had to support myself by working as a designer. I didn't -- my f-- I was not like many Dumbo artists who had some kind of trust fund or something like that, but I had to take care of myself and pay my rent, so I worked as a graphic designer. I did a lot of branding work. But anyway, so, in 2001, there was a big internet debacle. I think some of you might have heard of Black Friday and so forth. It was when the internet economy was very young. 57:00So I lost my job. My father died, I lost my job, changed my job, hated my job, we had 9/11, and at the end of the year -- this is all in one year. At the end of the year, my husband told me he had stage IV throat cancer. So I had to change what I did, and I ended up going into the public school system. While working as a designer, in the last few years of being a designer, I spent six of those years being a professor. I taught for three years at Parsons, and I taught three years at Cooper Union, and I also taught at the Whitney Museum. They had a satellite museum called the -- at the Philip Morris building. So I also was a museum educator. So I used -- I realized that I really enjoyed teaching, so I used those skills. I went into the public school system to teach art on the high school level, because there was -- there were no jobs for me as a designer. And 58:00I also realized, when the economy did get better after 9/11, I probably would be too -- considered too old or too antiquated to be a hot designer. So I went in as a teacher in a public high school in Bed-Stuy, and it really was a big eye opener. And I realized how, even though I was going through my own trauma, that there's so many people who live in much more traumatic lives and precarious places in the city. And so now I have been in the public school system for about fourteen years. And like I said, my husband was sick, and I was his main caretaker for eight years, so that was through stage IV cancer, Parkinson's, and 59:00a stroke. And through that, I really realized that, you know -- I became very passionate about my work as an educator. So when I look -- look at the world that I live in, in Dumbo, even though I have gained a great fortune through my luck of -- my karmic -- my real estate karma, having a beautiful home in an amazing -- the most expensive neighborhood in Dum-- in Brooklyn, I -- I use my time -- my focus is to try and help elevate the lives of my students, so that they can become as successful, because they come from families where they're barely making it. And as we know, with the 21st century economy, who knows what kind of jobs that we're going to have, and automation and robotics are going to 60:00really change the nature of work. So I kind of feel, like, a lot of irony in my life, but in that, here I am trying to elevate, and I live in a world of elevated people in my community. You know, like, my building is occupied by corporate presidents, successful hedge fund people. I'm the outlier. I'm the public school teacher. I'm the widow. I'm the person of color. I'm the old person in my building now. I don't really hang out with my neighbors. I kind of choose not to, because I don't think that they really understand my journey or what that journey has meant, or is. The only person that I probably still talk 61:00to in the neighborhood, of long standing, is our super, who -- we've known each other for thirty-eight years, so we're like family.

SULLIVAN: Is that Louie, the -- still --

SUN: No. Louie -- Louie gone a long time ago. It's this guy Mario. Mario is someone you should interview.

SULLIVAN: Let me pause and switch the SD card.

SUN: Yeah. Okay.

[Interview interrupted.]

SULLIVAN: Okay. So this is part two of our interview on June 4, 2017. And sorry to -- so Mario, you were saying.

SUN: Yeah. Oh. In Dumbo, there's a family that -- called the DiMaios. Mama DiMaio has lived in that building on the corner of [6 seconds redacted for privacy] almost her whole life. And she's probably in her late seventies now. 62:00And there are several families there, Latina, Latinos, that you guys should go interview, because they've lived there their whole -- they're the unseen people of Dumbo, and it's really their -- they've been there forever. I think there's a Garry Winogrand photograph of some of them hanging out on a corner having a summer barbecue. Like, they used to have a giant barbecue with, like, wading pools on the street, and, like -- you know, like an urban barbecue.

SULLIVAN: Yeah.

SUN: But -- but I would say right now, you know, the people who live in Dumbo -- I don't think it's a community, you know. Like, what do they share? They share the common experience of eating at Almondine, and the Atrium, and buying food at 63:00Foragers, but are they really -- would they ever band together to do some-- do certain things to help other people I don't know, or, you know... But like I said, I don't -- I think there's probably people who will band together as parents to do things for their kids, but it's a -- it's a real -- it's a very p-- to me, it's a very privileged community, and, you know, New York is becoming a place of privileges, and if you don't have that admission ticket or that passport, it's becoming harder and harder for people to have -- I look at my colleagues at school, you know. They're hardworking, professional New Yorkers, dedicated to -- to helping people have a better lives, and what does it cost to 64:00buy an apartment? You know, a teacher starts out with a salary -- a New York City public school teacher starts out at $50,000 a year, which is not too bad, you know, but what does that buy you, you know? How far out do you have to live to be able to have a home? You know? And I hate the idea that, you know, like, I look at all the -- I -- I grew up in the -- I lived in the East Village. I lived in the Bronx. Even the Bronx, everything is so gentrified. I have a student -- I have several students who are homeless. My st-- my students at MECA come from all over the city. They tra-- some of them travel, like, literally ninety minutes each way to get to school every day. Three hours a day to get their education. Some of them live at the edge of the city and are in illegal, shared 65:00home-- apartments that are divided -- that are from single-family homes that are divided, because that's all their parents can afford, single parents. So where do they go, you know? How far do they have to go to -- to have a decent home?

SULLIVAN: What's the racial dynamic of the school?

SUN: Oh, my school? MECA's actually pretty diverse for a New York City public high school. So we -- I would say it's, like, ten percent white, ten percent Asian America-- Asian, and then the rest, I would say, it's, like, forty percent Latino, forty percent African American. But the kids are every -- come from every -- you know, the Caribbean, Africa, Tibet, Albania, Poland, you know. They 66:00come from the end of the Bronx, Staten Island. We really represent the entire city, you know. And I know, you know, it's -- I'm not surprised when a kid tells me that they're homeless. And then it's pretty tragic, because you see how it destroys a student's sense of security and wellness, and it makes it hard for them to do their work, how angry they become. And the schools become this manag-- instead of managing their education, we're also -- we are now the keepers of their emotional -- we try and help them find emotional balance or be some kind of refuge. So, you know, I think that's part of one of the reasons why I feel like such an outlier in Dumbo. So --

SULLIVAN: And do your -- do your neighbors -- do you think -- do they know the 67:00history of your building? Do they know your role in that history? Do they --

SUN: I think the people who live in my building know my role in the building, at least if they've lived there for a long time. So I think all the owners know that. I'm -- I -- I'm respected by my neighbors, and -- but I don't participate in the big decision making now. I just kind of -- I mean, if it's really important, I'll go say something, but --

SULLIVAN: To, like -- is it a condo board now, or...?

SUN: Yeah, it's a condo board. I was a condo president for a while, and, you know, motivating people, and understanding money and needs and desires -- they're so hard to balance. And I'd rather use my energy in my role in my school where I'm part of the leadership, and -- It's a much more rewarding thing. I 68:00have what I want in my home, so I just try and get along with everybody at this point. But I think people -- you know, people -- I remember the first time I realized what kind of person was -- how different people were moving into Dumbo, when there was a woman standing in cowboy boots and big fur coat, hailing a cab, you know. That kind of, like, [laughter] was, like, okay, you know? It's a very -- it's a very different world now. And it -- I mean, the whole world is a different world. There is -- you know, I -- I don't feign nostalgia for my past or whatever. I mean, I think what's going on in Dumbo is just another indicator of how -- what a, kind of, moral quandary and ethical quandary that we live in, 69:00you know, in the city. But I think that -- I came to a place that was a community, and I don't know how it exists as a commu-- it was a little town. It was the Wild West, and we were the homestead on the Wild West, and now it's a big city. Now we're -- I think the other thing that I find ironic and sort of -- just ironic, is that we're becoming like Manhattan now. And -- but I think lots of Brooklyn is -- the whole downtown Brooklyn is becoming like Manhattan, which I'm really sad about, because the flavor of Brooklyn, which was so appealing to me, you know. I mean, I grew up in the Bronx, you know. Like, the Bronx didn't have the history -- has its own history, but the life of Brooklyn that I -- that I enjoyed is vanishing, so that -- that is hard to see. That is hard to watch. 70:00But, you know, like, how do you keep your humanity and your connection to community as things change, you know, I guess, is more the question. But Dumbo was an amazing place to launch my adulthood and live there, you know. Will -- will I -- you know, I'm coming to the age of where I'm thinking about retirement and stuff, and, you know, I love Dumbo, you know? There's a part of me -- I love the water. I love the river. I canoe the river. I do outrigger canoeing in the river. I've got to do that, because I saw this giant race that launched from the park for many years, and now I'm one of those people, you know, in the outrigger canoe around the city. But, you know, the Dumbo that I love, I can only 71:00experience at, like, six o'clock in the morning, when I walk my dog. And then it's like there's a quiet, and I can hear the birds sing. I hear the train rumble. I watch the river. I watch the tugboats. I watch the harbor. You know, there's a really beautiful rhythm and a connection to the architecture and the building. But then all the wedding photographers show up, you know. All the tourists show up. They sit on my stoop. They, you know, they lie on the street. And then it's just, like -- I'm, like, oh my God, I want to run away from that. So I don't -- I don't know if I will continue being here forever. I used to think I would stay in Dumbo -- like, my friends would kind of joke, "You have an amazing place. You should stay here forever." But I don't know, you know. It's, 72:00like, between the changes in the community, and then just the fact that now I have to -- when I go home, I have to fight to get into my building. That's kind of insane. I used to have a car. I haven't had a car in three years now. Even if I could afford to keep a car in a garage, I couldn't drive my car to the front of my building, because there is always, like, fifty people standing on my street. You know, you can't drive. I couldn't unload my car without getting into having someone yell at me because I was parking my car. So Dumbo's a [laughter] very different place from the dead body at the end of the street, or the smells of gum tape, or the trolley. I remember when they took the trolley out, and they 73:00went around the neighborhood. But it's changed, and now it's this, like, nostalgic piece, that it's, you know, absorbed into the cobblestone. You know, now it's the place to come and buy dishes and eat salad, and jump in front of the view of the bridge. So -- Dumbo has evolved.

SULLIVAN: And how about your art? You know, going back to the -- when you first moved there, your art and your connection to the space. And where are you at with that now? I mean, I know you're --

SUN: Yeah.

SULLIVAN: -- doing so much educating, also, but --

SUN: So when I went to Cooper Union, I studied painting and bronze casting. Very useful skills. [laughter] And my teachers were part of abstract expressionism. 74:00And so when I came out of school, I had this ability to understand modernism, but I found the vocabulary really lacking, and that I couldn't figure out where my voice was. And then I realized that I liked narrative, and I liked storytelling. So the environment in Dumbo, the 19th century industry mechanics and the architecture, fed my artwork. So I actually did a lot of paintings that were inspired by the neighborhood, but they're not -- they're more internal landscapes. I did a series called Archetype and Ritual in the Mundane. And that was about taking objects that I found, and tattooing them with painting, so 75:00actually -- Crane Davis, I gave him a street parking sign that I had painted leaves and tree branches on. I have cans that were crushed, that I found on the street, that I painted -- right in front of the Empire stores -- that I painted images on. I still have them. I have boxes of worker gloves that I embroidered shields with pictures of hands. You know, it was about the use of your hands. There are dishes that I -- that represent different time periods. So, like, you know, if you think about when people would go to a -- on vacation, and they would go to Niagara Falls, and they would buy a dish, and it would have a picture of Niagara Falls. So I collected dishes that were from the '80s and the 76:00'70s and '60s, and I painted images of iconic things from Dumbo, like the -- the -- the fire alarm sign, the drains. I could show it to you, because it's actually a portrait of Dumbo.

SULLIVAN: Yeah, yeah.

SUN: But they're on dishes. So I got a lot of inspiration from the neighborhood. And then I started doing more pieces that were more portraitures of -- of mentors. So I did a big installation at the Bronx Museum, and it actually involved oral history. So I interviewed different people. It was like a homage to my father, because my father had passed away. But so I made these books. I made this wallpaper. I made this room. That was about memory and portraiture. 77:00It's called The Studio Portrait. And then that evolved. So more and more, I found myself looking at -- I don't know -- I guess direct storytelling. And then my husband got sick, and that kind of changed my sense of the value of art and art making. So up until that p-- so there was -- so I did a lot of -- I had started doing, like, video, and little, like, filmmaking and storytelling, but -- so that's where it kind of ended. I mean, there are still paintings that I've done since then, but they're much more personal, and they're much more about transformation, loss -- I guess how you make sense out of trauma, into the 78:00world, so a lot having to do with Buddhism and things like that. So -- but that's kind of how it's evolved. But this idea of storytelling and icono-- I looked a lot at, like, Chinese metaphysics, so that kind of influenced when I was doing the archetypal things. But I've always been interested in, like, archetypes, and mythology, and... So I -- in a sense, I guess, as an artist, in my profession, I feel like I'm the -- I am the hero of my own story. I am trying to slay the giant dragon. But the dragon has transformed. Where it used to be this thing that, you know, like, the young artist comes to Dumbo with this idealism, like, I wanted to be the next Georgia O'Keefe. Ha, ha. [laughter] That 79:00didn't happen. You know, I would have shows in great places, like, really great opportunities, like the Neuberger Museum, Art in General, Artists Space, you know, all these places. But, you know, fame and fortune as an artist is really hard to come by. So anyway. But I think my greatest effect as a dragon slayer has actually been as an educator. And then I have lots and lots of kids that I have changed their lives. And I have se-- you know, I didn't have any of my own children, but I have three young men who consider me their mother, and they're all creative, and they're all artists of some kind, so it's kind of -- and they're all young men of color, so it's, like, kind of interesting. And they all -- you know, like, I'm a single woman. They all come, and they help me, and they 80:00take care of me, and they do stuff for me, and they, you know... But I guess that's my journey that began in Dumbo.

SULLIVAN: And we -- this is a tough question --

SUN: Yeah.

SULLIVAN: -- and you don't have to ask --

SUN: No.

SULLIVAN: -- but I was wondering. You were -- you said that you were the caretaker for your husband as he was --

SUN: Yeah.

SULLIVAN: -- you know, through -- did he pass away at home, or...?

SUN: No. He passed away in the hospital. But it was kind of ironic. Like, the -- he -- so one of -- so one of the -- in our building, there was a big construction accident that set off the sprinklers --

SULLIVAN: Oh gosh.

SUN: -- flooded my home, and it flooded, particularly, my bedroom and all -- it was, kind of, like, prophetic. It's, like, only -- my husband's name was John. John's things were destroyed. Like, literally, everything that he had precious 81:00was destroyed. And he had -- he was in the hospital with aspiration pneumonia. He got aspiration pneumonia -- like, you get a cold, he got aspiration pneumonia, you know. But this time the aspiration pneumonia was particularly bad. And it was at a time -- like, I kind of knew he was reaching the end of his life. So he was in the hospital. They released him. He came home. Our home was flooded. It was a mess. There was mold. He had to sleep in the -- we had to sleep in the living room. And then he got sick again. Like, he was home for maybe a couple days. Then he went into the hospital. And he couldn't -- he was on a ventilator, and they said, "You -- oh, he'll be fine. We could give him a tracheotomy, and he could live on a machine." And I was just like, "We are" -- because I was basically -- my mom and myself, we were his only caregivers. His 82:00family didn't do anything. So I was just like, it was eight years, and I just couldn't -- he didn't want to live on a machine, you know. He was a chef, biker, construction -- I mean, he -- you know, he was a very vivacious man, you know, very active. So we were like, "No, we're not doing this." And so I pulled the plug, and he died. But it -- it was -- it was the right thing. It was not -- it was not a way for him to live, and it was not a way for me to live, either. So...

SULLIVAN: That's nice that your mom was able to be there, too.

SUN: Oh, yeah. And my mom lived in Concord Village, and she helped, and then my mom -- she was already in her eighties, and she was helping, and then she got sick, and then I had to take care of her. So I have had to do a lot of caregiving. And, you know, I miss my mo-- my mom passed. My dad passed. John 83:00passed. You know. Miss them all, but [laughter] don't want to be a caretaker again.

SULLIVAN: Yeah, yeah.

SUN: I get paid to be a caretaker at school, but, you know. But yeah. So, you know, my home is filled with lots of energy of all these different things that have --

SULLIVAN: Yeah.

SUN: -- happened.

SULLIVAN: Yeah.

SUN: Yeah.

SULLIVAN: And was John an artist as well?

SUN: No. He did -- but he was very creative. He did martial arts, and he -- when I met him, he was a carpenter. Loved motorcycles, Harleys. We rode cross-country on a Harley and back. We had lots of adventure. He was a character. But he became a chef, but -- he wasn't a visual artist, but certainly as a chef, he was very creative. Good cooking.

SULLIVAN: Carpentry and cooking in the loft living seems --

SUN: Yeah. Lots of --

SULLIVAN: like a good combo.

SUN: Yeah. Lots of knives. I have lots of knives. [laughter] That's all I can say. Lots of sharp implements.

SULLIVAN: And you -- you mentioned Buddhism in your more recent paintings.

SUN: Yeah.

SULLIVAN: Was there -- was there faith or something in your childhood?

SUN: If you -- I think if you -- have you ever been to Asia?

SULLIVAN: No, I haven't.

SUN: No. Okay.

SULLIVAN: I would love to.

SUN: Okay. So, you know, in the sense, like, the United States is a Judeo-Christian -- we're Catholic, Jud-- you know. If you go to Asia, Buddhism is pervasive in the social structure of the countries, in the way people live. It's in the culture. It's lived every day, so it's not just, like, you go into 85:00the temple, and you practice it. I think -- my father's family had a greater connection to Buddhism, and my mother's family were actually Catholic, so they were, kind of, more westernized, and different kind of perspective. But my father -- my father's family stayed in China during the Cultural Revol-- you know, all through Communism, whereas my father -- my mother's family left China during the civil war and came to the United States. So my father's family had much more of a situation in terms of trauma, and suffering, and loss, and courage, and challenge, and they persevered, you know. And they're thriving, and a lot -- I mean, a lot of -- all of China, you know, not just my family. But my 86:00father had to endure a lot of trauma and loss and pain. I mean, he didn't see his family for thirty years.

SULLIVAN: Wow.

SUN: From the time that he was, like, twenty-one, he didn't see his family face-to-face until he was over fifty.

SULLIVAN: Wow.

SUN: You know, there was no internet. There were -- you couldn't ca-- you couldn't pick up a phone and call China. They didn't have phones. If you wrote a letter, it took weeks or months to ge-- come back and forth. So it was a very different kind of way to make sense of the world. And I think when I got older, and, you know, my father had an accident, and he died, and, you know, and all the things I went through with my husband and then, later, my mom, Buddhism is 87:00something very rich and important for me to learn about and understand, because now I understand what my father was saying when he would look at me and go, "You are going to suffer." And I -- when I was a kid, I just thought he was trying to scare me, but now I understand how, like, that's one of the four noble truths. So no matter what you do, no matter how -- where you go, how you live, how much money you have or not, or -- you're going to die. You're going to get sick. You will suffer. And desire is a terrible source of pain for people. So I -- you know, I'm a survivor. I'm chal-- you know, I'm living my life with as much passion and vitality that I can, and I, you know -- like, I probably have more on my plate than three people put together, but I like that, and I -- I want to 88:00feel life. I'm the person that -- like, if you tell me the fire's coming, I'm going to run up to the fire and try and put it out. That's what I'm going to do. If you tell me that change is coming, I'm going to go make it for myself before you impose your ideas on me. I'm going to -- I'm going to drive my own bus. I drive my own bus. But I think Buddhism is a great platform for me to have for that, because, like, if I can't -- I have to live in the present. Past is over, it's gone. And if I clo-- if I try and define what the future will be too much, then I might miss something that -- I might miss what really comes to me that could be even better. So I try. But I'm not an expert. [laughter] I'm human, you 89:00know. Yep.

SULLIVAN: And your mother's family who did come to the States -- did you --

SUN: Oh, yeah.

SULLIVAN: -- were they around for you?

SUN: So my -- so the son -- my -- my family history is actually really interesting, so I'm going to talk a little bit about the Pans and the Suns. My mom was a Pan, or a Pai, P-A-I, or Pan, P-A-N. Depends when you arrived in the United States. Grandfather Pai came to the United States in 1917 and went to MIT. Very unusual thing to do. And he came from a very wealthy family. So he went back to Shanghai and Nanjing, and was an engineer, and ran tobacco factories and power plants, and grew up very privileged. So my mother's fam-- my 90:00mom grew up in a home with -- every child had their own nanny, and, you know, more money than -- you know, great wealth. But they were very westernized, also. My mom was the oldest. Being a woman in China, not great, but her parents saw that she was very smart, so she got a great education. Brilliant mind. My mom could do calculus on an abacus.

SULLIVAN: Wow.

SUN: You know, I have her abacus. But -- so she came to the United States, went to Yale. Got this incredible scholarship to come to the United States to do it. So she was very smart. So -- and then her siblings -- she had sister-- she had -- I think there are six of them, and there's only one aunt and two uncles left. 91:00The rest have all passed away. But all very smart, engineers, doctors, that kind of thing. And then my father's family, the Suns, grandfather Sun went from being very poor to being one of -- being the chairman of the board of the Shanghai electrical company, up until the civil war. And he had -- and my father grew up -- was born when my grandfather's career was still very modest, so the Sun family has a different view of life. And my grandfather's -- grandfather Sun was -- had a great love of Chinese classics and paintings, and became an art 92:00collector, which is also like becoming a scholar, because there's a lot of poetry, and writing, and cultural fostering that collectors do in China. So anyway, he had this great wealth and property, owned ports in China, owned stock ex-- you know, companies and stuff, amassed this art collection, saw the -- that the -- he wasn't, I wouldn't s-- I would say he was a great patriot, and he realized that communism would offer more things for China than the nationalists. But anyway, he realized, though, that nobody would appreciate his art collection, and that he should give the -- most of the collection to the -- a museum for safekeeping, so he did that. Anyway, he was a victim of the Cultural 93:00Revolution, and he got sick, and he was a capitalist, and so he died during the Cultural Revolution, which was very sad. But his legacy as a collector and as an industrialist still lives on. So, actually this past year, the Shanghai Museum did a big show of his art collection.

SULLIVAN: Oh, wow.

SUN: And I actually got to go back and see the exhibition.

SULLIVAN: Wow.

SUN: But I've been to Shanghai four -- four times previously. And I only met my Shanghai family after my father passed away. But it's kind of interesting. They're still -- all the cousins -- my cousins, my generation -- were still bound by the legacy of our grandfather, even though, maybe only three of us, or two of us, knew my grandfather. But so it's kind of an interesting lineage.

SULLIVAN: And did you meet -- who from your mom's family did you meet? Did you know your grandparents on that --SUN: Oh, I knew all -- yeah. My grand-- my maternal grandparents left China and ended up in New York City, so I knew them through my childhood. But they were not warm [laughter] and fuzzy people.

SULLIVAN: Oh. [laughter]

SUN: They were -- you know, they were very high class people who were used to have the servants raise the children, so even though, in the Bronx, we grew up in this building complex called Fordham Hill, till I was about six, my grandparents -- kind of like Concord Village, except the buildings were beige. But the -- my grandparents lived in the building next door, and, you know, my mom would run errands, and she'd leave me at my grandparents', but my -- I don't 95:00ever remember ever being hugged or kissed by my grandparents. They fed me. I remember my grandfather giving me Pepperidge Farm Bordeaux cookies when I was well behaved. [laughter] Like, he would go, "Kiddo, do you want a cookie?" And I would get a cookie. But it was only at the end of the visit, and it was one cookie, you know. So, you know, they were -- you know, it was always, like, my grandfather was the engineer. He went to MIT. He ran around the house in a little red jacket that said MIT. And, you know, they were very serious people. But, like, no hugging, no kissing, nothing like that. They were very dignified.

SULLIVAN: And when your mom went back to work when you were a teenager, what did she -- what field?

SUN: Yeah -- oh, she went back to being an architect.

SULLIVAN: Oh, okay. Yeah.

SUN: So women's -- my parents did not have a -- my parents were good children. They were both the oldest children in their family. And like I said, they found themselves as refugees in New York, and I think they -- they discovered each other, and knew that they both came from the same part of the world, and their families were at similar economic positions, but I don't think that they necessarily -- I don't think that their -- their perception of love is the same perception that my -- my dreams of what, you know, being married meant. I think that they had many more social norms that they were supposed to try and attain, and they're very different people, and so they ended up -- my mom coming from privilege and finding herself living in the Bronx, you know, and -- with not 97:00many resources, must have been kind of frightening and scary for her, and she was very angry about it. And my dad, you know -- Chinese men in New York City are invisible, you know. Whereas in China, he was from a very famous family, you know, so -- and he -- and my father also was very burdened by the loss and the pain of his -- what his family was going through, and I think my parents didn't know how to talk to each other about that, or bridge that. No couples therapy. [laughter] No psychotherapy. No social work. You know, nothing like that. So during the '70s and women's liberation came along, my mom wanted out, and she got out. She started working, and her goal was to leave, and she left my dad. 98:00And it devastated my dad, so that was another big thing. But she went on -- my mom had a very interesting career. She went -- so when she was at Yale, she trained with Louis Kahn. And my mom was a big modernist. And she w-- when eventually she went to work -- she worked at Marcel Breuer. She worked at Gruzen Samton, or Gruzen whatever it was then. And then she eventually went to work for I. M. Pei.

SULLIVAN: Oh, wow.

SUN: So my mom's expertise was curtain walls. So if you look at the Bank of China in Hong Kong, which was where my mom went to high school, my mom is in that building. And if you go out to San Francisco, and you see the San Francisco library, the skylight is my mom's --

SULLIVAN: Oh, wow.

SUN: -- last project. So -- so they -- both my parents were -- I didn't come from your typical immigrant family, you know. It's, like, people -- when I was a kid, I used to get really angry. People asked me if my parents owned a 99:00restaurant, or did we own a laundry, and, you know, couldn't be further from the -- but, like, from outward appearances, you know, that's what people assumed, you know.

SULLIVAN: Yeah.

SUN: But they were very -- they were good parents in that all their children got great educations, and we all knew about hard work and perseverance, and so -- And now all my family's in California. I'm the -- the lone person in New York. So that's probably another reason why I think I probably will end up -- event-- after I'm just, like, so sick of all the tourists and -- [laughter] I'll end up somewhere in California. Or I could just be one of the fifteen percent of Asian Americans in California and escaped the East Coast. East Coast winter.

SULLIVAN: Mmm-hmm. Did -- growing up, did -- was Chinese language and writing 100:00part of --

SUN: So the written language of China is the same, but the local dialects are all different. So my parents spoke Shanghainese dialect. My mother could also speak some Cantonese. So my parents spoke Shanghainese to each other, and it eventually became their language of conflict. So that made it hard to listen to.

SULLIVAN: And could you -- but you could understand it?

SUN: I think -- I think I was good at understanding it up until I was about six years old. And then they stopped talking to us, as children, in Shanghainese. They just talked to each other, and then we just communicated in English. So I am not bilingual.

SULLIVAN: Did they have -- do you think that their -- this is sort of --

SUN: Yeah.

SULLIVAN: -- aside, but it's of interest to me.

SUN: Sure.

SULLIVAN: Do you think that they had an idea that it was -- did they have that 101:00-- I feel like it's generational, where some people are negative about bilingual?

SUN: No. So okay. So New York City -- so a little primer on Chinese immigration. So the Chinese were not allowed into the United States to immigrate only up until -- like, you could come to the United States and work, like a tran-- in the transcontinental railroad or whatever, but you were not allowed to bring a wife.

SULLIVAN: Right.

SUN: You couldn't get married. You couldn't own anything. You were an -- you're -- "We're happy to have you work, but we don't really want you here." So --

SULLIVAN: Chinese Exclusion Act and --

SUN: Exclusion Act, yeah. So when my parents came as students, they were allowed to come be students, and then they became refugees, and then the Refugee Act allowed them to stay. And it was only under that circumstance. And then 102:00eventually they got their citizenship. So -- I'm sorry. Did I miss something? I feel like miss-- so anyway. So that meant, in New York City, there was a tiny Chinatown when I was growing up. It was the original Chinatown, and it was only below Canal Street. And it was primarily people from the south of China, who were Cantonese, because they were the farmers who, you know, drought, famine, whatever, left China and sought their fortunes in the United States. Being Chinese in the Bronx -- there were, like, five Chinese families in the Bronx, and we were one of them. And we probably knew the other four. So when my parents would go to Chinatown and my fa-- my father worked at 2 Broadway, his whole life 103:00in New York City. So he went all the way from the north Bronx on the number 4 train every day. He left the house at 6:30 in the morning, got on the train to his job in Lower Manhattan, could see the Statue of Liberty, back and forth.

SULLIVAN: And he was an engineer?

SUN: He was an engineer. And he could go to Chinatown. He could walk to Chinatown. But Chinatown was small. So Chinatown was mostly catered to the southern Chinese, and that was the dominant language, so my father could speak Shanghainese, but only to a few people. So when I was a little kid, and they wanted us to go to Chinese school, there were not many Shanghai Chinese schools. I do have a memory of going to Chinese school, and, basically, was hysterical crying because I didn't know what was going on. And I still kind of remember being, like, so little that I could barely see over the table, and crying, and 104:00went, like, a couple times, and then it ended because the school closed, because I think they couldn't -- I have lots of great memories growing up in New York as a little kid, though. You know, like Radio City Music Hall, going to the -- my dad took me to Broadway to see shows. I went to Lincoln Center. My dad was trying to get a PhD. He would take me, when I was, like, five years old -- because my mother was pregnant and they wanted the kids out of the house -- my dad would take me with him to the main library on 42nd Street, and I would sit in the library while my father studied. I don't know what I was like when I was five, but I had to sit there and, like, look at books, or whatever. But I have memories of going to the library like that.

SULLIVAN: Would you ever go from the Bronx to Brooklyn?

SUN: Uh, let's see. We went from -- let's see. We went from the Bronx to Manhattan, but we didn't really go to Brooklyn, and we didn't go to Staten 105:00Island. We went to Harlem. We ate Chinese food in Harlem. There was a -- some very special restaurants on 125th Street. But I don't remember -- no, no Brooklyn, no Queens.

SULLIVAN: Check that. Oh, I guess, getting --

SUN: Yeah.

SULLIVAN: So I was thinking about, like, education.

SUN: Yeah.

SULLIVAN: So you went to an arts high school.

SUN: Right.

SULLIVAN: So one of the things I wanted to ask was, sort of, when you -- sort of, thinking about life as an artist --

SUN: Yeah.

SULLIVAN: -- like, when -- when did that -- when did you connect with that?

SUN: Oh. I always, like -- okay. So gender stereotypes, I think, had a lot to do with my childhood, and also my mother's own thwarted sense of creativity. Like, I think, in my mother's heart, that she probably wanted to be an artist and a 106:00dancer. And like many parents, they live out their fant-- you know, their unfulfilled fantasies in their children. So I went to ballet school. And, you know, of course, at home, you know, we had lots of crayons and pencils. My mom had an area in the apartment where she would do architectural work, because she freelanced when I was a kid, even though -- she didn't go to work, but she -- my mom could do what they call architectural rendering --

SULLIVAN: Oh, yeah.

SUN: -- so she could literally take a blueprint and turn it into a drawing. So this was before Photoshop, so if a person wanted to see what a building would look like, my mom would actually draw it --

SULLIVAN: Oh, that's cool.

SUN: -- with colored pencils. So we would watch her. I have these amazing drawings that she did. Amazing. So -- so we'd watch my mom draw, with 107:00blueprints, architectural tools, my father's engineering, all around the house. So there w-- my parents took us to museums. I remember going to see the 1964 World's Fair, and riding up and down the escalator to see the -- Michelangelo's Pieta. Or when I was a little kid, getting dressed up to go downtown with my mom to see the Mona Lisa. Like, I -- I still remember these things. I still remember looking at my little patent leather shoes, and my little red coat. But anyway. So, you know, making art was a really joyful thing, and I was good at it. And I went to ballet school. Did my parents push science and engineering on me like they did on my brothers? No, they did not. Did they indulge in my fantasies of 108:00animal husbandry? [laughter] No, they did not. No such luck, you know. So, you know, and me being the wicked middle child, and rebellious, you know -- my little brother was often sick. He had asthma and eczema. So no one paid attention to me. Like, my older brother was the perfect child. He would get, like, a hundred on the regent's test, and I would come home with a ninety or a ninety-two, and my parents would say, "What happened to the rest of the points?" And I would go into my bedroom and slam the door and cry, you know. It was, like, that kind of thing. So anyway, I didn't want to be like my brothers. I think I deliberately failed the admission test at Bronx High School of Science, because I didn't want to go to school with my brother. (laughter) And I wanted to go to art school, so I went to -- I went off to LaGuardia, or Music & Art. 109:00Yeah. So -- But I also trained for being a dancer, and I was very good at it, and got into the dance part of the school, which was called Performing Arts, but, you know, the Russian ballet teacher looked at me, and she goes, "You will never find a job." I mean, she told me this.

SULLIVAN: Wow.

SUN: She said, "You're a really good dancer, but you have the wrong body type, you're too short, you have big boobs, you're, like, the wrong color. You'll never have a career. Don't come here." And she was right. And, you know. And I didn't want to be a dancer. That was my mom's dream. And I was kind of happy to let go of that, so I went off to Cooper -- I went to Music & Art, and then I went to Cooper Union, and wanted to be Georgia O'Keefe. [laughter] You know. But didn't realize, like, I didn't have the money to do it, so I had to find other 110:00ways, which is how I landed in Dumbo.

SULLIVAN: Oh --

SUN: Yeah.

SULLIVAN: The bar in Dumbo that you mentioned, like, in the --

SUN: Oh, super fun --

SULLIVAN: -- early days when there was not much going on.

SUN: Oh, okay. So -- so there was a bar on York and Adams, which is where, I think it's 85 York Street. It's the big tall building with the terraces. So there was an -- it was called the Two Bridges Bar, and it was a place where the ironworkers, the bridge workers, would go.

SULLIVAN: Oh.

SUN: And one day, these three women came, and they decided that they wanted to sell food at the bar. And those were the ladies who went on to found Superfine.

SULLIVAN: Oh, cool.

SUN: So they started making hamburgers. Really, really good hamburgers. So 111:00everybody was very excited. So they would put tables on the street. So we would sit on the street, you know, with all the dust and the dirt and everything, and eat delicious hamburgers under the BQE.

SULLIVAN: That sounds great.

SUN: That was fun, yeah.

SULLIVAN: Yeah. Another thing I wanted --

SUN: Yeah.

SULLIVAN: -- to follow up on was the -- the $5000 fee for --

SUN: Oh, okay. So --

SULLIVAN: -- and -- and I wondered who answered your ad. Like, when you put your sign up, who actually, like --

SUN: So th-- so there was this woman named Marge. And I don't remember her last name. Marge was -- there was a couple who had gone to school at Pratt, and he was a ceramicist, and she was, like, a jewelry designer, or something like that. He had an affair. They broke up. She found a new husband, and she had this loft (laughter) that looked like hobbit world. So they wanted money for what work that they had done. And that's what the fixtures --

SULLIVAN: Oh, I see.

SUN: -- bought you. Fixtures didn't give you -- didn't -- you didn't buy the building, but basically you're paying for the refrigerator, the cabinets, the bathtub, the walls.

SULLIVAN: Mm-hmm, right. Because they had installed, like, a kitchen, and a bathroom, and --

SUN: Yeah. And -- and these were very modest fixtures, you know. Nothing like now, you know. All totally illegal, not to code, poorly made, slapdash, you know. That's what I paid the money for. And so, ideally, like, if I left, I would charge the next person money, but, you know, after awhile, like, who wants to pay money for something that doesn't really -- there's no real val-- you know, like, the bank isn't going to recognize it, so... That's what the fixture 113:00fee was.

SULLIVAN: Let me see if I have other -- I had some follow up.

SUN: I have, like, millions more stories, but [laughter] [inaudible].

SULLIVAN: Yeah, yeah -- or what did you say? You --

SUN: No, no. I can't even remember all -- oh, and the name of the lawyer that we used?

SULLIVAN: Oh, yeah.

SUN: You're right. It came to me. His name is Jed Marcus.

SULLIVAN: Jed Marcus.

SUN: Jed Marcus would be very good to talk to, because he actually did work for tenants, and he had a lot to do with Brooklyn loft tenants, and he did work for Walentas.

SULLIVAN: Oh, that's interesting.

SUN: I don't know if he still -- I don't know if he still does work for Walentas, but he did -- it was Marcus Attorneys, and they were in Brooklyn. So he set up the Greenpoint Manufacturing Center.

SULLIVAN: I was wondering where -- did you know where Jerry Rachman -- where he 114:00lived? Did he live in the neighborhood, also?

SUN: No. I don't know where he lived. He probably -- I think -- like, I don't really know.

SULLIVAN: In Brooklyn, do you think, or --?

SUN: I don't know.

SULLIVAN: Could be.

SUN: He could -- he might have lived in Brooklyn, or he might have lived in Manhattan. But you could look up Rachman Bag. There were lots of bag companies, because they made burlap bags. Like, there was the -- the milling -- the spice place. You know about the spice place.

SULLIVAN: Mm-hmm.

SUN: All they used were burlap bags.

SULLIVAN: Oh, yeah.

SUN: You know, so --

SULLIVAN: Did your -- I think -- I mean, because --

SUN: Yeah.

SULLIVAN: -- you had your wedding down -- down --

SUN: Yeah.

SULLIVAN: -- in Dumbo, so I assume that your family came to visit, but would your family come -- come to visit?

SUN: Oh, my family thought I was absolutely out of my mind, where I was living, how I was living. Like, there was even -- like, I remember my father was so 115:00upset we didn't have a sink in the bathroom, because we had to take the sink in the bathroom out to put in a hot water heater, you know. But I remem-- my little brother came over. My parents were divorced then, and my dad and my brother would come over, and I -- I remember my little brother telling me -- and he still actually says it to me -- he goes, "Yeah, we just thought you were crazy that you would live down there." And it was just desolate. Just really, like, nothing there. Anything you wanted to do, you had to leave the neighborhood. But it was easy to leave the neighborhood, but, you know. I remember I would go buy groceries in Brooklyn Heights, and by the time I walked through the park and down Washington Street, my bags would be breaking, and the onions would be, like, rolling -- rolling down the street, or so. But, you know. It was, like -- they just thought I was crazy. But out of everyone in my family, I'm the one who 116:00did best, real estate-wise. [laughter] So it's actually kind of funny. I was the biggest risk taker, and it paid off.

SULLIVAN: Any connections with -- I know that you said that the workers who were there --

SUN: Yeah.

SULLIVAN: -- that they would leave at four.

SUN: Yeah.

SULLIVAN: Did you have connections with the -- you know, was there --

SUN: So -- okay. So I'm going to talk about dogs. So dogs are a very interesting way to experience a community and the neighborhood. You can walk with a dog any time of the day, and, you know, it kind of gives you permission. A dog is like a passport. I -- my first dog was a giant red-nosed pit bull named Ratchet. And 117:00because of Ratchet, there's me, this Chinese woman, Chinese artist, petite Chinese artist, and this big red pit bull, walking around Dumbo. I made a lot of friends. Some people would, like, kind of, look at me in the beginning, like, you have a vicious do-- it was all during, like, the evil pit bull time. But, you know, like, I -- I kind of made a game of it. And then I thought, there are people I will see every single day, and if I say hello to them and smile every day, eventually they will say hello to me. And it worked. And they did. And they became my friend. Am I still friends with those people? No, but it was, kind of, like, the way to -- you know, so I knew factory people. I knew other artists. I knew the pizza parlor guy. You know, like, I knew people. There were these two men who worked in the Gair buildings, Louie and Tony. I have pictures of Louie 118:00and Tony and Ratchet in Dumbo, like, in the '80s. But, you know, it was, like, of a certain era. Anyway, but there was Ratchet, so I could see the neighborhood. Then I had Ladybone, who I actually got on Montague Street.

SULLIVAN: I like that name.

SUN: Yeah, Ladybone. She was a big white pit bull. And because of her, I made friends with police people, because, apparently, Ladybone, at one point, was abandoned on the roof of Farragut housing projects, and the police officer who rescued her ate breakfast at the pizza parlor. So one day I walked by, and she comes running out, and she's like, "Oh my God, oh my God." So -- so dogs brought people into my life from the community that I didn't know of. And then now, like I said, you know, the only people I probably really talk to in Dumbo are the dog 119:00people. Some dog people. Yeah.

SULLIVAN: And what kind of dog do you have now?

SUN: Another pit bull. And her name is Moo. Moo is black and white. She's a little -- she's very sweet. There used to be hobos in Dumbo, and they had dogs.

SULLIVAN: Oh.

SUN: And they would walk around with a posse of dogs that they would find. There was Captain Lucas -- oh God, what the other -- and the other guy looked like Popeye. What was his name? Oh my God. It'll come to me. But --

SULLIVAN: Where would they live? I mean, did they --

SUN: They lived in a -- they had a shack at the end of Washington Street in the dump that was at the end of the street. Captain Lucas and -- God, what was his name? Anyway, they had a --

SULLIVAN: That's like those -- that Forgotten Man movie from the '30s.

SUN: Yeah. There were a bunch of things. But, so Captain Lucas -- Ronnie. Ronnie and Captain Lucas. Ronnie was white, Captain Lucas was Hispanic. They had a posse of dogs. They both had a shack in the dump. Captain Lucas had a girlfriend who was this petite, fat, African American woman, who rode around in a Cadillac, and apparently the men had an argument over her one day, and they -- I was sitting in the dump playing with Ratchet, because it was, like, this open space, and they were mad at each other, and they torched each other's home.

SULLIVAN: Oh.

SUN: I remember sitting there watching the shacks go up in flames, and running to the fire alarm box, and -- but that's -- that's like the kind of thing that would happen in Dumbo.

SULLIVAN: But other -- otherwise, were they kind of friendly people to have around, or --?

SUN: Well, you know, if you're an alcoholic hobo, and you walk around in a 121:00stupor all day with your pack of dogs, you're, like, sometimes you're friendly, and sometimes you're not. And sometimes the dogs are social, and sometimes they're not. But you knew who they were. You could say hi. You could say, hey, you know. [laughter] That's who used to live in Dumbo. That's why we all knew each other. It's like, hey.

SULLIVAN: I was going to say, that's, like, seem-- that's, like, more -- even though I knew -- like, I know that that's, like, a more friendly thing than this, like, very -- yeah, the -- either the tourists, or just the very -- I don't know what it is.

SUN: Tourists come in. They drop in for five minutes. They leave. They get their coffee. They take their picture. They go to Pier One. They take another picture. They go to Grimaldi's. They leave. They never come back. Will they ever look at their picture again of themselves jumping under the bridge? Maybe for a year, 122:00and then they'll discard it.

SULLIVAN: [laughter] Oh, I'm just going to switch th--