On The Bridge

The night free103point9 took an FM transmitter to the top of the Williamsburg Bridge for a DJ party

Greg Anderson, left, and I-Sound at free103point’s 1997 DJ show on top of the Williamsburg Bridge bike path. Brad Truax is behind I-Sound. Photo likely by Violet Hopkins.

Shortly after Greg Anderson, Violet Hopkins and I started the pirate radio station free103point9 in March, 1997 (with a live interview with Matthew Shipp as the first broadcast), we hosted one of our most ambitious events. We had a DJ show on top of the Williamsburg Bridge, on the old bike path that was directly above the cars and subway, where no one could hear the event unless you were there.

The St. Petersburg Times had a story on June 20, 1997 by Michael Upledger about the event, which it says was on May 24, so here, I’ll go through that story and comment throughout.

The west end of the Williamsburg Bridge looks like a scene out of Escape From New York _ desolate, decayed and vaguely hostile. Graffiti and discarded quart bottles decorate the rickety stairs leading to the pedestrian walkover, which has holes large enough to see the traffic whizzing by below.

This is the span that connects a run-down section of Manhattan's Lower East Side with Williamsburg, a seedy, mixed-industrial neighborhood across the East River in Brooklyn. At midnight, the bridge offers a spectacular view of New York City's night lights, if you don't mind the sharp wind that ripples your pant legs and chills your bones.

In the middle of the bridge, equidistant from Brooklyn and Manhattan, a gas-fired portable generator supplies the volts to power a half a dozen floodlights, two turntables and a mixing board. This is it, then: the Free 103.9 FM pirate radio party. A spontaneous combustion of non-commercial music illegally broadcast live from an unpermitted location.

First, obviously, our name was free103point9, but the Times uses one of the many other names the pirate radio art organization was called. For the Florida readers, the writer plays up the scary, urban nature of the setting. At the time, I rode my bike over the structure — where Sonny Rollins woodshopped his “The Bridge” album — every day and many nights and never had any sort of problem.

Maybe two dozen people are milling about, watching the documentary film crew set up shots of a DJ working the wax. A handful of still photographers are there, too, punctuating the night with sudden, bright flashes. It's nearly 1 a.m., and the party hasn't even properly started yet. The sudden realization that there are no restrooms at a party on a bridge in the middle of the East River sends a new chill through your body. There is no bar, either, of course.

Before long, one of Free 103.9's founders, Tampa expatriate Tom Roe, arrives, a bottled drinking water in hand. Free's other founder, Greg Anderson, is bent over the disc jockey's table trying to fix a glitch in one of the sound channels.

The documentary crew mentioned were Art and Phil Harris, who were, and may still be filming a documentary about 87X, the pirate station I co-founded in Tampa in 1994 with Billy Budget, Matt Mikas, and many others. Recently I talked with Kelly Kombat, who took over managing 87X when I left for New York in 1995, and he said they never completed the film and no one has seen it. And then Anderson and I are mentioned because we are from the Tampa Bay area; Violet Hopkins came from Texas, and was unknown to the writer and his audience.

As the music gets going, more and more people appear and, as often as not, they're connected with Tampa: photographer Chris Coxwell, filmmaker Phillip Harris, with brother Arthur and film tech Greg Szenas in tow, Pee Shy's Jenny Juristo, 87X FM's Kelly Kombat, the boys from Home, designers Catherine Hill and Marco Maretti, video producer Susan Glass. . . . Close your eyes against the skyline and you could swear you're back in Tampa, standing on the Kennedy Street bridge at a deja vu party.

Roe and Anderson started Free 103.9 last March, broadcasting out of Anderson's living room with a tiny transmitter they bought from Tampa radio pirateer Craven Morehead. The station, which can be picked up in Williamsburg and Greenpoint, typically broadcasts only on Sundays, though both Roe and Anderson hope to expand the hours as well as secure a larger, permanent studio.

The first paragraph above is accurate except Katherine’s name is spelled with a K, and Moretti’s name is also spelled wrong. Anderson, Hopkins, and I started free103point9 in March, 1997, out of Anderson and Hopkin’s railroad apartment in Williamsburg, across from Oznot’s restaurant at the time.

"We're looking at getting into a new space with a couple of bands in July or August," Roe says. "We'd be able to share equipment and do more live broadcasts, instead of just playing records."

Roe describes Free's music format as mostly audio collage: jazz, experimental, lounge, dub. The DJs rarely talk and favor instrumental selections, often mixing and splicing different tracks into their own creations.

The music wafting over the river on this night fits the description to a T; it could be the soundtrack from a bizarre, student film over at NYU, or just the background hum of a strange, unsettling dream.

"We're into newer, obscure music," Anderson says. "Being a pirate, you can do what you want."

Anderson adds that the station's focus isn't political, it's creative. The broadcasts aren't statements, they're performances.

"I'm not involved in the "outlaw' thing," he says. "We're not anarchists or punk rock squatters.

"I've always been interested in broadcasting, and when Tom Roe talked about starting the station, it just sounded great."

free103point9 did get a space in September, 1997, where I lived at 97 S. 6th St. in Williamsburg next to the bridge, where we hosted broadcasts, and had live music shows. One night Animal Collective, !!!, and Black Dice all played there. Other nights there was free jazz and weird radio experiments. I-Sound (pictured above) was the DJ most of the evening on the bridge, and goes uncredited in The St. Petersburg Times.

Roe got his start in pirate radio several years before, back in Tampa, when the fledgling 87X began broadcasting out of Ybor's late Blue Chair Music, of which Roe was a co-owner.

"I was living in Blue Chair at the time and did a lot of programing for the station," he recalls. "No one was really listening to 87X back then, though. Sometimes I would offer $100 to the first caller and no one would call in."

Oh, those were the radio days.

Roe says that building a listenership for Free 103.9 has been an easier task, simply because there are so many more people in Williamsburg. However, that comes with a downside, too.

"In New York, you don't have as much access to large spaces," he says. "With 87X we always had parties and events around Ybor, but that's hard to do in this tiny, congested place."

Is that why you have to go out on a bridge to have a radio party?

"Actually, I stole the idea," Roe says. "I was riding my bike over the bridge at about 2 a.m. one night, and these people were having a party with a live band and a generator. It just seemed like a great idea."

It was, and is, save for the lack of facilities. And by then we really had to go.

That leads to the end of this tale. Everyone who moves to New York almost always has their rip-off story, and mine is returning the generator from this event to where I rented it from in Queens. I got a sketchy rent-a-van, and they extorted money from me, which I did not have, to return the generator. I don’t know exactly how, but somehow I talked them down, but did have to pay them off some outrageous amount. Oh, those were the radio days.