Season 2 · Episode 7
Club kid icon · Model and muse · Lower East Side Girls Club
Released 19 Sep 2022 · 52:35 as a podcast
Every name, club, book, song, night and look from the interview - 105 references and 305 mentions in this episode. Jenny Dembrow, aka Jenny Talia, reads her goodbye to Michael Alig, then goes back to sneaking into Mars at 15, getting turned away at The Building until Pat Field's redid her look, and the VIP glass cube where she found her tribe. The Phil Donahue Show in a borrowed gimp mask, Gaultier's runway and Steven Meisel's Calvin Klein campaign, the club kids in Paris, Queen of Manhattan in a pink prom dress, the 11th Street after-hours - and how she went from the club to the Lower East Side Girls Club.
A pale silver-grey satin dress with big puffed shoulders, dark hair in a high bun with a black headband, winged eyeliner, face gems and fine vine tattoos on her neck
In front of a shimmering gold tinsel curtain
DIY club kid make-up
Jenny's early homemade looks - cassette-label stickers folded into eyebrows, a colander on her head
Jenny met him at 14 or 15; he took her into his band of revelers and made her their queen. In her Christmas 2020 post she says the Michael she loved died the day Angel was killed - but the early Michael was a wonderful friend to her
Heard as “Eilig / Michael”
Jenny's chosen family; Fenton thinks they have been culturally underestimated
FashionClub Kid looks
Heard as “Club Kid / Club Kids / Club kid / club kid”
Host; a friend of Jenny's for 29 years who talked her into the interview - and apologises for how he portrayed her in his book
Heard as “James”
The guest: Jenny Talia, club kid icon, model, muse and former Queen of Manhattan - now co-executive director of the Lower East Side Girls Club. Links to her Night Fever episode
FashionClub Kid model
Heard as “Dembrow / Jennifer / Jenny / genitalia”
A Lower East Side party girl with wilder stories than Jenny's, Jenny says; she won Lady Bunny's game show and made an art piece with Andy Warhol in a casket
Heard as “Mama Lou / my mom / my mother”
Jenny's best friend and fellow club kid model - they snuck out together, moved out together and were in a band together
FashionClub Kid supermodel
Heard as “Carl and I / Carlin”
Walt says he discovered Jenny before Michael; with Desi he took Jenny and Carlin under his wing. On the Paris trip the club kids hunted the Louvre for his picture
Heard as “Walt”
Jenny says the Freeze she knew at the 11th Street apartment was caring and loving - she keeps that person apart from what happened later
Heard as “Freeze / Fries”
Started 25 years ago with a shopping cart; now a 35,000 sq ft home in the East Village with a planetarium and 50-plus programmes a week, co-run by Jenny
Heard as “Girls Club / Girls' Club / girls' club”
James and Jenny remember the after-hours days and nights on her couch; James apologises for how he portrayed her in his book
James apologises for how he portrayed Jenny and Mavis; Jenny has never read it, and the bits she did read didn't offend her
Heard as “his book / my book / the book”
The club kids' trip - and Jenny's first runway, for Gaultier
Heard as “Kara / Paris / Parisians”
Co-host; tries out his theory that the club kids were the first version of the metaverse
Heard as “Benton / Fenton”
Where it all happened
Rejected at the door, then let in: in the glass-cube VIP room Jenny found her tribe. James loves the old power building
FashionRaw industrial space
Heard as “The building / the building”
Ran a game show in the back of the Tunnel that Jenny's mother won; Jenny's Queen of Manhattan wig was almost Lady Bunny-esque, she says
FashionBig wigs
Heard as “Lady Bunny / lady bunny”
The club kids went in their club-kid drag to find Walt's picture in an exhibition, James recalls
Heard as “Louvre”
One of Michael's contests; Jenny won it in James's borrowed wig and pink prom dress, then stormed the runway and tore the wig off
FashionPink 80s prom dress, wig
Heard as “Queen of Manhattan / queen of Manhattan”
Where Jenny and James first met, on set - she was introduced as a 16-year-old club kid
Heard as “Donahue”
Jenny reads her Christmas 2020 Instagram post about it
Heard as “Michael's death / death of Michael”
Where Jenny was born and grew up
Heard as “Manhattan nightlife / born in Manhattan / cleaned up Manhattan”
Jenny worked at Pat Field's at 16 - and redid her look there to get past The Building's door
Heard as “Pat Field / Pat's / Patfield”
Jenny's early homemade looks - cassette-label stickers folded into eyebrows, a colander on her head
FashionDIY club kid make-up
Heard as “colander / tape cassettes”
Where Lady Bunny's game show and Nina Hagen's New Year show happened
Heard as “Tunnel”
Dancing there felt like a religious experience, Jenny says; she met Tim Armstrong there
Heard as “Limelight / in this church”
Later and more of a celebrity scene, with an elevated style; James thinks Jenny's band played there
Heard as “Club USA / and USA / at USA”
The club kids take Paris: Michael had no passport; there were torches and pitchforks, James jokes
Heard as “back to Paris / in Paris / take over Paris”
In the same Calvin Klein campaign - Jenny got a full page in Vogue next to her
Heard as “Kate / Kate Moss”
Barefoot in a giant slice of pizza in Paris, James remembers - Fenton calls it a metaverse look
FashionPizza costume
Heard as “pizza”
At the Page Six dinner in Paris, as James tells it, she left in tears after his poppers-and-I Will Survive stunt
Heard as “Gloria”
James's pink 80s prom dress with matching sleeves, a hideous wig and white heels from the shoe racks outside a shop - then bald
FashionPink prom dress, wig, white heels
Heard as “80s prom”
Where Jenny spent a lot of time, she says; James says he was persona non grata there by then
Heard as “11th Street”
Co-host; asks if there was a moment Jenny felt the scene had gone too far
Heard as “Barbado / Randy”
When Jenny posted that she'd been Queen of Manhattan, someone wrote that Susanne was the queen
Heard as “Suzanne”
Michael's friend who introduced Jenny to him
Heard as “Nicole”
Borrowed from John Boy for The Phil Donahue Show, so her parents wouldn't recognise her
FashionPatent leather gimp mask
Heard as “gift mask / gimp mask”
Already bald at 16 - Nina Hagen signed her head in Arabic
FashionShaved head
Heard as “bald”
Asked Jenny on air if she was drug free - and Michael's quip turned the audience, as James tells it
Heard as “Phil Donahue that / Phil said”
Lady Bunny's game show in the back of the Tunnel; Jenny's mother won and gave the prize money to her daughter
Heard as “game show”
At a Tunnel New Year show she signed Jenny's bald head in Arabic - Jenny still wonders why she never got it tattooed
Where the night finally ended - Randy says they need a whole show of Save the Robots stories
Heard as “save the robot / save the robots”
Saw Jenny in the Gaultier show and wanted her for the Calvin Klein campaign
Heard as “Meisel”
Steven Meisel booked Jenny for the campaign after the Gaultier show
FashionFashion campaign
Heard as “Calvin Klein / Klein ad”
Pat Field's friend, a glorious French Paradise Garage dancer and model agent, who found Jenny behind the counter and said she should model
Heard as “Michelle Saunders / Michelle. And”
Where Michelle Saunders danced
His Paris show was Jenny's first booking as a model
Heard as “Gaultier / Gautier”
Jenny's first booking as a model, through Michelle Saunders
FashionRunway
Heard as “Gaultier show / go TA show”
They met when he was at Pratt; Jenny walked in his shows and he called her his first muse. He supports her work at the Girls Club
Heard as “Jeremy Scott / he was at Pratt”
Where Jenny took Lyn Pentecost's classes - and where she and James once argued, as his old letter reminded him
Heard as “NYU”
Fenton and Randy's company, as James says in the intro
Heard as “World of Wonder”
Jenny says the Michael she loved died that day
Heard as “Angel”
Fenton says he spoke very eloquently about the toxicity after Michael's death
Heard as “Ernie”
Jenny's first club - she snuck out with high-school friends
Heard as “Mars”
Turned Jenny and Carlin away at The Building's door - until they came back redone from Pat Field's
Among the first club kids Jenny saw in The Building's VIP room
Jenny thinks she was at The Building on her first night there
Heard as “Lady Miss Keir”
With Walt, like mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters to Jenny and Carlin
Heard as “Desi”
The boots Jenny swapped with Chanel on Donahue so her mother wouldn't see them
FashionSpiked white boots
Heard as “white boots”
Recreated Jenny's white boots with spikes, she says
FashionSpiked white boots
Heard as “Mosquino”
Jenny in a borrowed gimp mask; James says the audience turned on them and nobody was thanked backstage
Heard as “drug free”
Where Jenny's mother ran the streets - and where the Girls Club is
His pier space was where Jenny's mother made her art project, as Jenny remembers it
Heard as “Bojnarowicz”
The piece Jenny's mother made at the pier: Andy Warhol in a casket with an IV of Campbell's soup
Her father's best friend, Jenny says
Used to come over for dinner, Jenny says
The IV of soup in Jenny's mother's Warhol piece
Heard as “Campbell”
In the band Jenny can't remember, with Carlin
Jenny remembers recording something with him
Heard as “Larry T”
Walt's book - Jenny admires how meticulously he put the stories together
Heard as “beautiful book”
On the club kids' trip to Paris
Heard as “Richie”
Where Page Six threw the club kids' dinner in Paris, as James recalls
Heard as “Bandouche”
Threw the club kids a dinner in Paris, James says
Heard as “page six”
James's disco dream at the Paris dinner
Heard as “I will survive”
Jenny walked in the show; he made her many pieces
FashionJeremy Scott runway
Heard as “Chernobyl”
Jenny's neighbour on 7th Street wrote for it and highlighted her parts in James's book
Heard as “New York Magazine”
James called Jenny a modern-day Edie Sedgwick in his book, she says
Heard as “Sedgwick”
The Rancid frontman Jenny dated for a while; they met at the Limelight - one of the most innocent humans she's met, she says
Jenny's NYU professor who started the Lower East Side Girls Club with a group of women and invited her to join
Heard as “Pentecost”
Where the Girls Club built its own home
Among the people James says have been part of the Girls Club
Likewise
Likewise
On the Girls Club board for almost 18 years and from the neighbourhood - its champion, Jenny says
James says he has talked to Lisa a lot about the clubs as a training ground
Heard as “Lisa”
Jenny's partner running the Girls Club
Jenny jokes the club kids should ask him for a piece of the metaverse pie
Heard as “Zuckerberg”
In front of a shimmering gold tinsel curtain
FashionA pale silver-grey satin dress with big puffed shoulders, dark hair in a high bun with a black headband, winged eyeliner, face gems and fine vine tattoos on her neck
His home library, floor-to-ceiling books
FashionA white shirt with big red poppy prints, chunky black glasses with long beaded chains
A glass-walled room with a pool outside
FashionA coral-red T-shirt and rimless glasses
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