GALO: There was a toilet (commode) hanging from the wall in the subway Siberia and then you moved it to the 40th street Siberia. What’s the history of the toilet?

TW: No. The toilet didn’t hang in the original, but it was the toilet in the original Siberia. I was fixing it, it was stuck, and the building guy came down, the manager, and he said, “I’ll help you.” I don’t even know how he found out. He wanted to make a tip or something, but I never figured that out. He was really helpful and he took the toilet off. And then he called the office — and this was when I was having the big fight with Mitsubishi — and they told him to leave immediately. And he looked at me; I couldn’t hear what he said on the phone, I couldn’t hear that they said, “Leave immediately,” but then the guy said, “I have to leave here immediately.” I said, “It’s not a problem.”

He was scared because he was working with me. They didn’t want to be associated with me. I disgraced Mitsubishi. It’s a multi-national Japanese company. I took that toilet bowl, which they wouldn’t put back in, and called them. But they said, “We can’t help you.” And then it started flooding up. So I took that toilet bowl and chained it to Mitsubishi World Headquarters in Tokyo with Tommy Shanahan (lawyer), and I told them, I’m not taking crap from anybody.

GALO: You hung it in Japan?

TW: No, I hung it around my neck in Japan. I took a big chain and chained the toilet bowl and my neck to Mitsubishi World Headquarters. They looked at us like we were bright, dancing martians.

GALO: How did you get that on the airplane?

TW: I went out to Queens, [New York] to a place that makes boxes for travel and it wasn’t damaged at all. So, when we’re going through customs, this lady looks at me and [before I knew it] eight or nine little dudes with big sticks are all standing around me — just hoping, probably, to beat me down. And she asks, “What is this?” as she hits a button and it starts to image invert, and says [imitating a Japanese accent], “a toilet bowl, for personal use,” making the cops go away. She thought I brought my own toilet bowl. So then we were all good.

Then the chains fell out, and I said, this is going to take 20 minutes to rectify. So I picked up the chains and threw them up around my neck, because I’d lived in Southeast Asia and I know how the Japanese are, and I said, [raps] “I’m a big motherfucker from the USA/I’m here with my friend/he happen to be gay.” I started doing a little freestyle rap, and they were like, “oh Rapper San,” and [just like that], they were gone — no more problems. They thought I was a rapper and it was good.

We stayed in this beautiful hotel and the next morning we went down to Mitsubishi World headquarters and I chained myself up. By the way, this is all in the documentary.

GALO: What’s the story behind “Dancing Dominic?”

TW: Great Story. I would throw people like Dominic out all the time, well not Dominic; he was special, but some crazy guy hitting on girls or being retarded. My partner at the time looked over at me and I said, “oh, I’ll get it,” and he would do the same thing, but [that time] he said, “watch this guy” (Dominic) and he was fantastic. So my partner said, “I want to hire him.” I said, “Do whatever you want, he’s brilliant.”

But there’s a whole other story. When Dominic died, he was going to go to Potter’s Field because he didn’t have any relatives. So I asked Jim MacManus if I could bring the body to the bar (Bellevue), and he said, “absolutely not, it’s illegal. You can’t do that.” What we were going to do was put him in the hearse and bring him to the bar and lay him out on the bar. But then his sister came to get him and took him with her. He would have had a better time with us.

GALO: Can you tell us what he looked like and how he moved around?

TW: He had different moves than anybody I’ve ever seen. He was a novel guy and he had to be 90. But he would make these moves with a lot of big hand gestures. He was a natural. I mean, if he were French, he would be Cirque du Soleil that’s just the type of guy he was.

GALO: Didn’t he work with a cane?

TW: I think the cane came along later, but he worked with whatever he had. He was truly brilliant.

GALO: I always liked how he dug, and danced to, all of the rock ‘n’ roll that played out of the jukebox and he was 90.

TW: I’ll tell you one thing, I forget how long his “sets” were but he would go out and bust moves like 30 minutes, and then one day somebody said, “I don’t know if Dominic’s taking time off. He’s not doing 30 minutes in a row.” And so I looked at Dominic, and said, “He’s dying.” He was dead a week later. But he was still out there. He was out there to the very end. He was a retired postman. He was a smart guy.

GALO: What’s your idea of how you have contributed to New York’s nightlife?

TW: These kids — and this is from the beginning of Siberia until the next Siberia and forever – what they got to see was the way it used to be. They got to see a little bit of the old school. And I think that if anything I’ve ever done, it’s that. And they just loved it. They’re like “wow.” It was people being cool.

GALO: There was nothing like Siberia, like a downtown bar, in midtown before Siberia, at least as far as I knew.

TW: I don’t think we were like any of those bars. Some of our people might have resembled those people, but you had real freedom because, basically, you could do anything. But again, it was in the right environment, with the right people. When they realized this could actually be done, it would just be mind-blowing. Because nobody ever let them do it.

The other thing is — everybody’s so preoccupied with making money that they’re not making anybody happy, they’re just making money. It’s about making everyone happy. There’s no Toots Shor’s or Elaine’s. It’s just all about bull.

GALO: Who are a few of the most colorful people you have had the chance to connect with?

TW: They were all colorful, different; a different spectrum of people. They were all cool. Everybody sticks out in my brain.

GALO: Any regrets?

TW: I don’t think you can have regrets. It is what it is — for me, no regrets.

GALO: What would you like to focus on in this New Year?

TW: Well we’re going to have to find out. As those Southern folks say, “We see, what we see now, won’t we.”

GALO: Any other tidbits you’d like to share with us?

TW: I think that everybody should do everything they want as long as they’re not hurting people and they can still pay their rent. I think that’s good. That’s what I got. Have a good time.

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