GALO: Tell me more about the character you mentioned that has developed lately.

TW: Well, you can’t see, but I have long hair and this beard, and everybody says I look like a biker. I had this agent and she kept saying to get my hair cut short. I’m from Rockaway. Everybody’s a cop or a fireman where I’m from. You want me to do a cop? I look like a cop. But then they would call me for the biker, all the time. People got an image of me, even if they saw a picture, they wouldn’t see that guy (the cop) they’d see this guy (the biker), so I grew the hair back out again. I’m dead serious. I don’t think I would look like this if that didn’t happen.

GALO: There’s a clip on YouTube where someone is interviewing you in the old Siberia and you have short hair, no facial hair, and look like a kid. It’s a whole different persona.

TW: Exactly. I can do that, I can do this, but when I did it, they just kept calling for the biker. It’s like they weren’t saying, “where’s Tracy the cop,” they’re saying, “where’s Tracy the biker –the evil guy.” I’d get all these shitty roles where I molest people.

I’m in a film with Adrian Grenier, I molest him, and it’s called A Perfect Fit (2005).That’s just crazy. I molest him, so I thought that was pretty funny.

GALO: In the film Across The Universe you played the Fillmore Manager. Was that a satisfying experience?

TW: That was fun. I go after movies now that say “untitled” because Across The Universe was the untitled Beatles movie. I knew Julie Taymor was the director and I know who she is. If I had one director to be, I would be Julie Taymor. But this is how lucky I am. I go to this audition, walk in, and there are no words, only reactions to certain things. Let’s say you’re the director. You’ll say some flat lines and I’ll say them in my way. With this, we were looking at each other visually, and then when it’s over, it ends. But when it was over for me, I continued the gestures to the director in this real life situation. And so they just totally got me, so when I walked out the door, I knew I got that part.

GALO: Manhattans, the bar you opened in Brooklyn in 2009. How long did that scene go on?

TW: That was an interesting thing. I had a partner, a money guy, he wasn’t a bad guy but there were just things that he didn’t get. He worked for Bear Stearns or one of those companies. When he came in we were open for 14 days. We were doing what we were doing; we were open. We had some people, got some press, but I think it was a toy for him before and then what happened was he came in and said after 15 days that we had to quit. I didn’t know what he was talking about. He wanted to close the bar. And I told him that’s insane. I spent months licensing this place, schmoozing the community board, and getting everything together. It was a lot of work. So we just had to go our separate ways. He gave me some money and then I left him with it, and he sold it or I don’t know what he did with it. In the time it took to license the place, and the 15 days of the bar, he lost his golden goose. But he wasn’t a bad guy.

GALO: And there were no Siberias, old or new, running during this time of 2009?

TW: No, nothing.

GALO: Did I hear you were born and raised In Rockaway?

TW: No. I’m from Wheeling, West Virginia. We lived in this house my father built by himself, by hand. It was crazy. I mean it’s not a log cabin. I had two sisters. Hanging out, it was great. We moved to Rockaway when I was six. It was the best thing ever. [Sings] “Rock, rock, rockaway beach…”

When my father got out of jail, which is appropriate for West Virginia, he was working for a meat packing plant and they were unionizing it. They were real gangsters. They were trying to push my father around and that just didn’t work. My uncle said, “look he’s gonna kill some more people and go back to jail if he stays there.” So we moved to Rockaway.

GALO: Through your eyes, as bar owner and via your personal experience with the nightlife, how would you say New York has changed over the years? Good or bad?

TW: It sucks. They killed the clubs. There are no clubs anymore — that was like 20 years ago. Very few fun places to go. Siberia won by default because it was always a great time, and you always met cool people because the way the door was run. So we would win by default. Because at most bars you don’t meet interesting, cool people and you definitely don’t have a good time. People [looked] like they took acid when they left, they were so happy.

GALO: What about the smoking ban. Did that affect business?

TW: Yeah, it was a big deal. I remember all that. It hurt business. Well, it didn’t really hurt Siberia, but that place around the corner (from 40th Street) Bellevue. In Siberia you could do whatever you want. But Bellevue, yeah, definitely hurt.

GALO: What was life like as a bouncer at Studio 54?

TW: It was fun. A friend of mine was a lifeguard when I was a lifeguard (and he was older than me); I’m pretty sure he was straight but for some reason him and Steve Rubell (owner of Studio 54) were very, very good friends. So when Steve went to jail, Freddy stayed there. That’s how close they were. So Freddy, the lifeguard from Rockaway, got me the job at Studio 54. I used to work the back door.

GALO: How was that different from the front door?

TW: [Laughs] It was a lot funnier; just had a good time at the back door, had my own private kingdom. I could let people in.

GALO: So the celebrities went in the front and out the back?

TW: They were high. They’d go anywhere.

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