Frankie: At this place we never really had enough security people for the amount of people who were going there. We’d get a thousand people there on a Saturday night. So I was working the door with one other guy –– like I said, there was only two of us. This is a place that at the high point of the night might have several hundred people standing outside trying to get in. This was November 11th, 1990, and it was a Saturday night about two o’clock in the morning and it was unusually cold that night. My partner went inside to go to the bathroom or something so I’m out there by myself now. It was kind of crowded in there so we were holding up on letting people in because sometimes you gotta wait until people start leaving. Also, a lot of times the club wants you to keep a crowd at the door anyway, just because it looks good. So, I wasn’t letting anybody in and these two kids come to the door. They had suits and ties on but no coats. They must have had their coat in the car or something because it was cold that night. The kid throws the name of one of the promoters at me and on the strength of that expected that I was going to just let him right in. Meanwhile, there’s a line of people going around the corner.

So I told him, "Listen, right now we’re not letting anybody in. You’re going to have to wait a little while. I really can’t help you right now." And he took offense to that. Right off the bat, he took offense to it. This was a kid maybe in his early 20s, you know a wannabe gangster, little tiny kid. That movie Goodfellas had just come out, so all these kids were like trying to be Joe Pesci, so I told him, "Listen, I can’t help you." Right from the jump he’s got attitude and I usually just ignore that. About two or three minutes later he comes back and says, "Let me in, I know so and so." And I says, "Look, I can’t help you. I told you before, you have to wait."

So, I’m talking to somebody else and I’m also letting people out, opening the rope so they can get out. As I’m in the process of that, the kid almost yells, real forcefully, "Can’t you just get so and so? I gotta get in there. I know so and so!" There wasn’t any confrontation with him. I just put my hand up and I says, ‘I told you, I can’t help you right now.’ As I’m doing that, he just reaches over the rope and stabbed me right in the chest.

86ed: I’m sorry.

Frankie: Now, if there had been more of a confrontational vibe to the thing I would have been more on my toes and I wouldn’t have even let that happen, and I was kind of mad at myself for letting that happen. But there wasn’t even a confrontation, so that shows you how crazy some people are. This kid tried to kill me; he stabbed me in the chest with a seven-inch-long blade. I mean, this is the scar, right there. That was in there, man. As soon as he stuck me with the knife, he and the other guy ran. When he pulled it out of me, I knew how serious it was but I opened the rope up and I started to run after him. The blood shot outta my chest like a hose, right? The people standing on the sidewalk didn’t even realize what was happening because it was so fast. I went to breathe and that’s when my lung collapsed. The air went through a hole in my chest instead of in through my mouth. It actually made a noise like ‘brrrrr’ and I thought to myself, ‘You know, I might die out here,’ so I stopped in my tracks. He got away and the other guy got away so I turned around and I walked back into the club.

People started to realize what had happened. People started panicking and stuff. I walked into the doorway. We had a revolving door and there was a hostess table as soon as you walk in. I sat down at the table and one of the bartenders that was there used to be a medic in the army so he pressed a stack of napkins into the wound.