Frankie is the reason I began to move these interviews from transcript form to audio – he has the last of the Bronx accents. It's more than an accent, it’s a poetic way of using words to actually communicate, rather than mask. It’s a way of thinking while you’re talking. When I met him, at Surf Reality in the mid 90s, he had just hit my acquaintance, Billy Syndrome. It was because he couldn’t hit my friend, Mary, who was on acid and had switched from talking about Louis Farrakhan nonstop to comparing every performer favorably or unfavorably to the middling good looks of Jerry Seinfeld. Mary was blowing up the spot, but Frankie’s code would not let him hit a girl, EVER. He’s a handsome mountain of a guy, wise and calm, and he talks about the fine art of the kick out. It reminds me of the Sufi method of encircling a whirling dervish until their fugue state passes –– a much better method than a bullet.

86ed: How did you get your start as a bouncer?

Frankie: I guess the first time that I started doing security work was in the Bronx, where I’m originally from. And as a kid, I was big, so I was always noticed by people, and I was always approached by people to do favors. People always wanted me to fight for them, or fight their battles ––

86ed: Can you fight? I have some big friends who can’t fight because they don’t usually have to.

Frankie: I grew up in an area where you needed to have skills, otherwise you would get abused. So I grew up fighting. Starting when I was a real little kid, fist fighting became second nature to me. I grew up around a lot of violence, so it wasn’t unusual for me to know how to handle those kinds of situations. I started working the doors of a couple of gambling places and shit like that, a lot of organized crime type of shit. When I was a little older, I had an opportunity to work in clubs. This was in the 80s, I was married and I had a kid and one on the way. I didn’t want to be stuck in the corner of hot smoky places like I had been working at. A friend worked at the Palladium and he gave me a chance to start working in clubs.

In 1990, I started working at this place called the Café Society. At the time it was the hottest place in city. Some nights of the week there was celebrities, other nights it would be blue collar type of people from the outer boroughs. In the late 80s and early 90s, in the club business, crowds started to get real specific. One night it would be all one kind of crowd, ethnically or economically. A promoter would throw a party –– in the club scene it’s all about promoters, the people who actually put the party together –– and that’s who determines the crowds, what kind of crowd you’re going to have.

So, most of my time working in Manhattan was in the night club business. I got stabbed working in the Café Society as a matter of fact. I got stabbed in the chest 7 inches deep, a half inch away from my pulmonary artery. It would’ve killed me if it would’ve been over a little more.

86ed: How did it happen?