3940 Broadway at 165th Street for a discussion of how the U.S. and Israel use incarceration
to contain and dismantle resistance and how we can push back and support the boycott movement.
For more information call 347-709-2264 or email bringmumiahome at gmail.com
And you're listening to radio station WBAI New York. The time is just about,
oh I don't know, seven o'clock? That means it's time for Off the Hook.
We couldn't get much worse, but if they could they would.
Bondedly bound for the best, expect the worst. I hope that's understood. Bondedly bound!
And a very good evening to everybody. The program is Off the Hook.
Emanuel Goldstein here with you on this delightful Wednesday evening.
Joined tonight by Rob T. Firefly. Good evening.
And Kyle. Hello hackers. And somewhere is Bernie S.
Greetings from Philadelphia. I'm actually in a closet in the back of an Irish pub right now.
Well we don't need to know about your private life.
Who put you there? I'll be coming out of the closet in an hour though.
OK. Well good to hear that too. And we'll have a special guest coming on board in just a little bit.
But first some news updates, things that have been going on in the last few days.
First of all a Hope update. Gosh how do I say this?
We pretty much sold out. I mean there will be some tickets left at the door, but we don't know how many.
It all depends on how things are working out.
But it's not going to be a lot. I'll tell you that right now.
I think there's maybe a couple left on the website.
But we put some up for people that might have missed out when we actually had to close it down last week.
And that went very fast. But I think there might just be one or two left.
So this is really the last chance to get those.
Hope.net, the conference is next week.
This is our last show before the conference. In fact we won't be back on until August.
And I think we need the time off because we're just going nuts.
But we're going to be talking about Hope and various other things that we're planning
for the Hackers on Planet Earth conference at the Hotel Pennsylvania.
But first, more importantly, what is up with Pokéman Go?
My God. We've been inundated with stories about this.
You know, Kyle and I have been driving around and we noticed this a couple of days ago.
Just a town out on the island, Port Jefferson.
People were just mobbing the place and we knew something was up.
I didn't know about this Pokéman thing.
And everyone's staring at their phones.
I just thought it was normal antisocial behavior that we're surrounded by.
Everyone's looking at their phone, not talking to the people they're with.
And why don't they ever hang out with the people that they are talking to on the phone?
Apparently they weren't talking to anybody on the phone.
They were hunting Pokéman or whatever it is that you do.
It looked exaggerated. It was more staring at the phone than we're used to.
Which we are, as a society, I think a bit more used to.
But it was stark. It was very almost disturbing to see these people just sort of
engrossed in whatever visual display is in their palm
and not actually really doing anything in that space that you would consider normal.
Especially for the time.
This is happening at all hours of the day and night.
Well, we found out what it is.
Well, I just think it's good that we saw something going on
and we knew right away this isn't right.
There's something wrong with this scene here.
Too many people are in the streets at all hours and they're all looking at their phones.
We're used to this kind of behavior, but this is a bit much.
And that was before I had any idea what they were actually doing.
And it wasn't until, I think, yesterday that we confirmed that, yes, in fact,
these people are engaged in, what do you call these kinds of games?
Augmented reality games or AR.
Augmented reality games, yeah.
In fact, there's an article in the New 2600 that just came out.
It's called Gaming Ingress.
And this was the first time I had ever even heard about something like this.
That's how out of it I am.
That there are games where you actually have to go places physically and, I guess, what, check in?
Is that what you call it?
Well, it's augmented reality.
It uses your phone's camera to look at the actual environment around you,
but then insert digital things into that environment,
insert virtual things into the real environment.
So when you're in a certain place and your phone senses this through GPS,
you can then hold up your phone and it will show you your surroundings,
but it will also show you the imaginary digital thingy that's standing right there in the game.
Yeah, there's an overlay of, like, a story or characters
and different goals within the context of the game's storyline,
except you're sort of participating in that storyline through acting
and being in a real space that has been associated with the game
in making use of the map functionality and GPS and stuff.
And what this also means is that if you're making a game that uses this,
you can place things in your game at certain spots in the real world.
Go ahead, Bernie.
I just want to say, this reminds me a lot of a similar technology,
but only halfway to where it is now,
which is around 2000, geocaching became popular,
where people were using GPS receivers, GPS navigators,
and the Internet, this is before smartphones, 2000,
to tell people that they had hidden little tchotchkes or whatever
near particular GPS coordinates, under a tree, behind a stream, that sort of thing.
That was half virtual world and half real world,
and now we're even closer to augmented reality.
Yeah, it's more of like a scavenger hunt or a treasure hunt
because you're actually getting a physical object
or unearthing some kind of thing that you can take back,
or a storage device, like a little box or treasure chest, as it were,
to bring in a memento from this find that you made,
whereas this is, those items and things are within the game itself,
and has a lot of different ways you can,
it ends up having unintended consequences,
where certain things, it might be, maybe it's just a flagpole or a monument,
it might have a different value in the context of the game,
it can be turned into something else,
it might be some kind of facility in the game story.
Well, I'd just like to ask the other people here
if you guys have actually noticed behavior from human beings in the street.
Rob, have you?
I have, not in the street, but at my day job,
everyone was talking about this when it came out,
and somebody was showing me what it was during lunch,
and in the process of this, found one of the imaginary creatures
on the plate of the person eating food across from him,
and was able to capture it.
Okay, well, I can tell you exactly what happened there.
You had just gotten the game, right?
Yes.
When this happened.
When you first get the game, they show up right in front of you.
I know, because we were driving,
and it was right on the dashboard in front of us,
and instead of swerving all over the street like we were doing,
all we had to do was throw a ball at the thing,
and we didn't have to.
Now, don't do that, folks.
Now, I was a passenger,
and I wasn't in any way causing problems for Kyle, who was driving.
I just was very excited when I saw that this thing was right on the dashboard,
and all you had to do was throw a ball at it,
and I think you get a free one when you start.
Another one reportedly in the real world was yesterday, I think,
and the day before it was Manhattanhenge,
where if you're in a certain part of New York City,
the sun lines up perfectly with the streets.
The second leg of Manhattanhenge.
Yes, the second leg of Manhattanhenge.
So this is normally something where people will gather in crowds
and take pictures, stand out in the middle of the street,
when traffic lights allow, hopefully,
and take pictures of what's going on.
But now people were reporting at this
that not everyone was standing up obliviously behind their phones.
They were also looking down at their phones
because they were doing this thing in the game.
Bernie, did you notice any behavior?
No, I haven't, but I've been wondering if these Pokemons,
do they run out into the street and cause people to slurp?
Well, it's interesting you should say that,
because that's one of the first things that I think any of us thought of.
All these people running around with phones
trying to hunt imaginary creatures.
You have all kinds of situations.
This is actually one of the reasons this did not appear as a phenomena sooner.
The parent company behind this game
is very concerned about their brand and the image
and wanted safety to become a big part of their research and development
so that it was actually ready to be used in real world places
where you have hazards like that.
They didn't want kids going into the streets,
playing this game and getting hurt as a result.
It would reflect badly on their brand and on the game and the fun of it itself.
Well, there are a bunch of things that are going on though
because apparently what they call PokeStops
are basically put in recognizable places,
historical landmarks, things like that.
It's causing problems because some historical landmarks
aren't really into all these people running around with their phones
hunting these creatures.
Washington, D.C.'s Holocaust Museum springs to mind.
They're not amused at all.
They've asked Pokemon Go players to stay away.
The museum has been designated a PokeStop
where players can pick up items like Pokeballs and Revives, of course.
Basically, their communications director was forced to point out
that playing a game inside a memorial to victims of Nazism
is extremely inappropriate.
Yeah, I mean, but how do you stop it once it's actually there,
once you actually label something a PokeStop?
It's kind of hard, I think, to unlabel it then.
Yeah, I also saw a friend of mine posted on Twitter a picture of a Pokemon
that was in one of the reflecting pools at the World Trade Center Memorial.
Wow.
It seems to me though that this could be sort of fused with activism
in an interesting way
if you could assign certain strategic spots where people need to get to
and there's really not much that the authorities can do about that,
especially if people are trying to get to places that they deem to be off-limits.
What I don't know, and maybe one of you guys understands how this works,
I've been somewhat familiar with this for exactly 20 hours maybe,
how do you label a location as something that people should go to?
Do we have the ability to do that
or is that something that only the game manufacturer people can do?
Yeah, our curiosity is what level would it be
that you then can make those designations
or is it even something that corresponds with the level that you've reached?
Rob?
For this particular game, it seems to be something that just the game company themselves
has some kind of algorithm to assign these values to real-world things.
One of the requirements appears to be places of worship.
Real-world places of worship are important in the Pokemon game.
We had to go to the First Presbyterian Church at 2 in the morning yesterday
and believe me, they were not happy about that, but you had to hunt these things.
Yeah, and the funny thing about this too is whatever database the game operators are using
might not always be up to date.
There is a case of a person who lives in a house that used to at one point be a church
and now since his place is still marked as a church in whatever database that Nintendo uses,
he's now got kids milling about on his lawn trying to catch Pokemon
or recharge them or whatever you do because the machine thinks he's a church.
Wow, okay, well that's a bit disturbing,
but it makes me think that you can't just label your enemy's house as a Pokestop.
Although they have these things, believe it or not, called lure modules.
Lure modules sounds really ominous where you can lure,
but apparently what you lure are Pokemon.
Is that the right plural use, Pokemon?
Yeah, it's like sheep and sheep.
So basically you're not luring other humans.
You're just luring the characters that you then hunt,
but it's possible you can lure humans too
and there's concern over predators and criminals and things like that.
So I've never seen a crowd of people so quickly influenced to do things except on television.
We were in a small village last night that was crowded with people hours after the village had closed
and the authorities really didn't seem to be that concerned.
I mean there was nothing to really be concerned about, but it was an awfully weird scene.
Well, one of the main things about the video gaming scene in general
is that it's fueled by speculation, possibilities, hidden things, Easter eggs,
things that you can be the first one to find or the only one to find.
And so in regards to the whole what can be done with this,
I think if you started a rumor that something in the game was at a specific place,
you could immediately have every player in the immediate area converge on it.
Yeah. I haven't communicated with any other people yet,
but I know there's all kinds of things you can do and it can take a lot of your time.
It's really odd to just see how people come together
and are intrigued by it just from a puzzle-solving perspective.
And I think it's along the lines of what Rob was saying that there's this fascination.
People not only started using it very, very quickly,
but are also figuring it out very, very quickly.
They may have been just introduced to it in the last week,
and there are already so many people that have a pretty good understanding
of what it's all about and how it works.
But there's this sense of sharing, too.
There's a lot of people going through the same sort of things, figuring it out.
As you said, you already knew what this other person was doing.
They had seen something in front of them,
and that's the result of becoming a new player in the game.
But it really was fascinating to see the intrigue at just figuring it out
and looking at it from a puzzle-solving perspective.
Bernie, yes, last word on this.
You mentioned a couple of months ago a challenge for people to get sued by Donald Trump
to get a free Hope ticket or something.
And I'm wondering, I certainly wouldn't advocate this or not,
but I would be amused if some hacker were to hack into the servers of this Pokemon game company
and have a mobile PokeStop that would follow Donald Trump around
with hundreds of Pokemons and points and things to gather.
So then you'd have all these people, an even greater number,
just pawing over Donald Trump in the Secret Service,
would have to send off real people while the virtual Pokemon would be scurrying about.
Well, this is definitely fodder for hackers to play with.
And in fact, I'm certain this is going to be a thing at the Hope conference.
So if somebody can figure out a fun thing to do with Pokemon Go for Hope,
we'd love to see what you are able to create and what imaginative uses
we might be able to demonstrate to the world.
But wow, I never expected to be talking about something like this.
But it's weird. It's going on outside.
It's something that you can't help but notice.
And everybody seems to know about it.
Yeah, they sure do. It's all over the media.
Okay, so that's that.
Write to us, oth at 2600.com, if you have any comments on this or anything else.
Moving on, going back to the Hope conference,
which will be taking place a week from this coming Friday.
Wow, I can't believe it.
But in two weeks, it'll be over.
We can rest.
But we've been featuring some of the talks that are coming up.
We have, I believe, well over 100 talks,
if you count all the tracks that we have and workshops,
just so many different things to present.
But this is one that's near and dear to my heart.
I know it is to yours as well, Bernie.
This is a talk on tuning in to New York City's Pirates of the Air,
Pirate Radio here in New York.
And we have with us in the studio right now David Gorin,
who will be giving that talk Friday,
a week from Friday at the Hope conference.
David, welcome.
Hey, thanks. I'm happy to be here.
Yeah, so now how did you get interested in pirate radio,
listening to pirate radio?
Well, I'm a long-time shortwave radio listener
and starting sort of seriously back in the late 70s, early 80s.
And that's really, in my experience, where you could hear pirates.
Occasionally on AM.
But I started coming up to New York City in the mid-80s
and heard actually FM pirates.
It was sort of like a hobby broadcasting scene.
There was WHOT, WFUN, playing oldies.
They were on discreetly, usually on 91.5 or 91.9.
91.9. That's always where I'd find them.
Yeah. Well, also 91.5 WNYE.
They used to sign off at midnight.
Oh, okay. So then the pirates just would sign back on.
And they were always on very discreetly on the weekends.
I heard they had some coordination between them.
And this went on.
And then starting around 94, 95, there was a station, WBAD,
which is sort of a precursor of what we have now.
They started playing hip-hop all the time on 91.9.
Again, mostly in the evenings,
but they were on in hours that the previous pirates weren't.
And then starting in late 96,
I started to hear on 87.9, a Haitian broadcaster.
88.1, Radio Moshiach from the Lubavitcher Hasidic community
were on the air.
And slowly it grew.
And it's been going on almost 20 years.
There are Caribbean stations, Orthodox Jewish stations,
Spanish stations, religious stations
within the Caribbean community.
And now on a typical evening or weekend,
which is the peak hours, I live in Flatbush, Brooklyn,
and I can hear about 35 stations.
Most of the frequencies you mentioned are below 92,
but I understand that the pirates are everywhere.
They're all the way up the dial.
They go up to 1079, which is the Flava station.
They're just everywhere.
Sometimes some of them seem savvy,
and some of them seem like they don't have a clue.
They're right next to WNYC.
They're right next to us, too. 99.3, I caught a pirate.
There's 99.3, that's Star FM.
You know who they are, wow.
Yeah, that's exactly it.
Could you pass a message to them?
Please, move to a different frequency,
because it's too close to us.
We're a little nervous about that.
But you mentioned 87.7, I believe.
87.9, 87.7, it's interesting, but it's not a pirate.
That's a Franken-FM.
Yeah, that used to be on Channel 6, right?
It's still on, it's the Channel 6 audio,
and I think Bernie may know more about this,
but I think for a while they had to have something visual,
but I'm not sure they have to anymore.
Well, since they've gone digital,
is Channel 6 even at that frequency anymore?
Bernie, do you know?
Yeah, Channel 6 still does have,
I mean, the FCC does still allow
analog TV broadcasting on Channel 6.
The original plan over the FCC years ago
was to have all the VHF TV6 frequencies
moved up to a higher frequency in digital mode,
and there was only like a handful of them across the country,
including WPVI here in Philadelphia,
that said, no, no, no, no, no,
we want to stay on Channel 6
because our signal will go farther on this lower frequency.
As it turned out, it didn't.
It really screwed themselves,
and they had to ask for higher and higher power levels
once it went digital.
But what the FCC's plan was,
was to expand the FM broadcast band downwards
to like 76 megahertz, which would have been awesome.
It would have freed up all this extra spectrum.
It would have gone, instead of from 88 to 108,
it would have gone from 76 to 108.
But because of a few TV station holdouts
that just were like dogs in a manger kind of a situation,
they wanted to stay there,
and it was to their own detriment.
It's really a shame it worked out this way,
and this is one of the reasons why we have pirate radio,
because there aren't enough frequency slots available
to serve a community.
That's exactly right,
and it's been growing over the years,
and it seems so chaotic
that I can not really make any sense
of who the stations were.
Whenever you see online people talking about the pirate scene,
you just see a big string of numbers.
So about two years ago,
I decided to apply some of my shortwave research skills,
and I'm a radio producer,
and I've done a lot of pieces on radio and community
and number stations and all sorts of things,
so I made a big chart
which documents everything I've heard in those two years
as well as some historical things.
And so at the HOPE Conference,
I'll be presenting my research in the chart,
and I'll be playing a lot of samples,
and I've been talking to station managers
and pirate listeners,
and I'm on the trail of a few pirate operators,
but they're hard to get a hold of.
Well, on the subject of samples,
you've brought some with you today,
and we have one queued up.
Do you want to intro this and tell us what we're going to hear?
Yeah, this is 92.1.
I probably recorded this in 2014.
Grace Deliverance, they're called GD Radio,
not for the Grateful Dead,
but for Grace Deliverance Chapel in Brooklyn.
Not sure they're on this frequency.
Someone else is on now,
but this is a really interesting minute-long excerpt of a DJ.
He's been greeting his audience.
He's probably somewhere in Flatbush Crown Heights.
He's of Caribbean heritage,
but he's saying hello to his Spanish listeners,
and in this segment,
he shouts out to his Yiddish fans in Crown Heights.
Okay, here we go.
Everybody should praise the Lord
Oh, yeah
Everybody should praise the Lord
Oh, yeah
Our Lord is great and greater to be praised
In the city of our God
In the mountain of His holiness
Beautiful for situation
Is the joy of the whole world
The joy of the whole world
Is Mount Zion on the side of the north
The city of the great King
Praise Him
Oh, yeah
Praise Him
Praise Him
From the rising of the sun
Until the going down of the same
The name of the Lord is to be praised
Praise Him
Uh-huh
Praise Him
Praise Him
Praise Him
To all my Jewish people up there in Crown Heights,
Wusmaxta
Praise Him
Everybody should praise the Lord
Everything is good
Oh, yeah
Oh, yeah
Malkishim
Everybody should praise the Lord
Good afternoon!
Oh, yeah
Everybody should praise the Lord
Wow, okay.
You know, I want to keep listening to that station.
I really do.
That's a really infectious track.
I have a five-minute chunk,
but I just thought I'd winnow it down to about a minute.
So that was recorded in Brooklyn.
That was recorded in Brooklyn.
I have a listening post in my house in Flatbush,
so I'm really kind of right in ground zero.
I can hear stations from New Jersey and the Bronx,
but really the main beat of what I hear is in Flatbush.
Mostly Caribbean.
And what kind of range can a station like that get?
Probably three to five miles plus.
That's a lot in a packed city like this.
It's amazing.
There are as many pirates as there are license stations.
And the farthest that I've heard is either 98.9 in the Bronx
or on 91.7, which is home to sort of a round robin,
and I have some more samples from that frequency.
Sometimes during the day, when most of the pirates are off,
but it sort of gives you an example,
a moment to hear places beyond the local,
because the local stations are off.
So in Essex County, about 28 miles away,
there's a station called GEMS, G-E-M-S, GEMS.com.
And on Facebook, their DJs go live, and you can watch them.
And GEMS is actually interesting as an aside.
It's almost more like a college radio station.
It's much more kind of has a more relaxed vibe.
But it's definitely unlicensed.
You know, it's amazing because, Bernie,
I don't know if you remember a couple of years ago,
we were trying to track down a pirate station in Queens
that was stepping on my other radio station's frequency of 90.1,
which doesn't really reach Queens, but sometimes it can.
And it's nice if it's able to without another station interfering.
It was a Spanish station that we found,
and we tracked it down, I believe, to a church in Corona.
That's right, Corona, Queens.
We drove around with some special equipment,
and we drove around, and I was in the backseat.
I was the backseat driver telling you where to drive,
and I had radio equipment in the back of the car.
And I was like, there it is!
And we looked up, there's the antenna.
So Mike and I, we went up the steps and knocked on some doors.
I had my 2600 hoodie on, which Mike was afraid
that somebody would think looked like some Federales uniform or something.
But they were having a live service downstairs.
It was being broadcast on the air.
But I talked to one of the people that met you at the door,
and I said, I need to speak to the pastor.
And he said, he's busy right now, but here's his number.
So I called him like a couple of days later,
and we had a good conversation.
I just explained to him that he was interfering with WUSB,
and would he mind moving?
Because interference is one of the things that attracts the FCC
when there's interference to license stations.
And he was very nice, and he just moved frequencies.
It was wonderful that everybody was happy.
Of course, somebody else took the frequency right after they moved,
but you can't just leave an empty frequency around, apparently.
But what I was amazed by when we did that
was seeing how low the transmitter actually was.
I think it was only on the second floor,
maybe on the roof of a two-story building.
Yep, it was a Comet 95SL 5-8 wave ground plane antenna.
Calling God's name, do you know what kind of antenna it was,
just by looking at it?
Yeah, it was the most popular pirate FM.
It's a commercial-grade antenna.
Well, it's really hobbyist-grade, but it's commercially sold.
But it's perfect for FM.
It's what we used at Radio Mutiny in West Philly back in the 90s.
It is a very good antenna.
And I think I was talking to David about this,
or maybe it was Matt Blaze.
I met up with David a while back on this project.
And we speculated that most of these pirates
were probably using a Comet 95SL antenna.
With that height of just two stories off the ground,
I was able to receive that station from Corona in Manhattan.
I was able to get that far.
Yeah, they really go far.
And when I walk around Flappish, I've spotted a few,
like just on the second floor.
And actually, there's just been a report issued
by the New York State Radio Broadcasters Association
who are wanting to tamp down the pirates
or take them off the air.
And they, for the fourth year in a row,
have done a survey in four different locations
in the Bronx, in Patterson, New Jersey,
in Newark, and in Brooklyn.
And it's funny.
Someone was just telling me about this the other day.
And lo and behold, this was released,
I think, for the first time.
I think the previous three weren't.
Radio Inc., the magazine, they have a link
to the 100-page PDF.
And they have shots of antennas that they discovered
on basically a DF pirate.
Emanuel, I just want to mention to our listeners,
if anybody emails us at oth2600.com,
I can send them a link to this New York State Broadcasters report.
It's like a 100-page PDF, as David said.
It's full of great pictures of these pirate radio antennas.
One of them, the one in East Orange, New Jersey,
is right next door to East Orange Police Station.
These are really great pictures.
And there's some really good comments, too,
from the engineer who crafted the study.
Some of them are kind of bogus, like the RF energy
poses a public threat.
And I mean, that's nonsense.
But it's interesting.
It's written with a slant, sort of protecting
the interests of broadcasters.
So there are some things that no doubt have relevance,
and other things that they're just trying to make the case.
But what they've discovered is that they're increasing,
and that the FCC really hasn't done or can't do much
to keep them up there.
Yeah, and by making it an issue and entangling more and more
operators as sort of like casting a wide net,
then they can say, see, look at what we're doing.
We're policing this a little bit better,
and look what we found.
I just don't think it's going to have much impact on the FCC,
because they don't have the funds.
And I think they've given up, I think,
short of a quasi-military effort.
There's no way to take 38 stations off the air.
This survey estimated that they heard 75
from these four locations.
And they said there are probably 100.
And I think there are probably more.
You know, without giving specifics,
I've known of stations that have operated in the commercial band
24-7 for years without being harassed.
And I think that just speaks to the lack of interference
that these stations actually are presenting
to commercial broadcasters.
Because if they were actually interfering,
then people would complain.
But without complaints, the FCC won't do anything.
Well, I hear it both ways.
I've been talking to – I talked to Ken Friedman,
station manager of WFMU.
He says he's made complaints,
and they've never been acted on by the FCC
because their staff is so small.
Yeah.
Well, you have another clip following this,
the one we just played.
So you want to tell us something about this one?
Yeah.
Well, the first one was a Ska Gospel
in which they were talking at least theoretically
to the Orthodox community in Crown Heights.
Here's a station that I heard a few months ago.
And it was a 919, which is usually empty during the day.
And I was hearing a rebroadcast of WCBS for weeks.
I couldn't figure out who this was.
When they weren't on the air,
they had their carrier on with the wine.
And finally, it gave way to this station.
Israel
Israel
Israel
Israel
Israel
Israel
Israel
Israel
Israel
Israel
Israel
Israel
Israel
Israel
Israel
Israel
Israel
Israel
Israel
Israel
Israel
Israel
Israel
Israel
Israel
Israel
Israel
Israel
the variety of music that yeah it was fascinating and they came on the air
they were on the air for a few weeks and they've been gone ever since they
finally they had some Hebrew sermons and they played I have a version of let
it be in Hebrew I mean it's a very interesting mix gear to the Orthodox
Jewish community. The thing is if you listen to regular FM radio stations you don't hear
that kind of diversity you just hear the same things and people want diversity so
that's why there's a need for pirate stations. I remembered my thought from
earlier where in my mind sort of went blank is it's not that they're not
interfering but some of the pirates I think have some strategy that a lot of
the main frequencies are on rimshot stations so they don't jump on top of
WNYC but they'll be on WALK's frequency which is in Long Island so
they're probably they're not getting a lot of complaints and so a lot of them I
think sort of hide on those regional frequencies on the Jersey Shore on Long
Island. Yeah it depends where they actually are because if they did that on
Long Island where WALK is a very powerful station they probably would get
complaints but if they're doing that in Queens no one's going to really notice.
Yeah but I know when I contacted Steve Schultes the chief technology
officer at WNYC he was like yes I want to talk to you about this. They have had a
problem and their listeners do complain but again I think it comes down to
enforcement doesn't have the resources and if you check this great site by
John Anderson's DIYmedia.net he has a letter that Tom Wheeler the FCC
commissioner wrote last year and it's sort of like it was in response to all
the reps, political reps in New York writing a letter to the FCC and he was
like not much we can do. Yeah and it's like in light of that level of
enforcement it's really it's a tough sell as far as dissuading people given
the amount of power and the impact that it has on the communities that are
listening. And it's reasonably inexpensive you know and if they get
busted they often get back on the air. Another Jewish station and there are
many more than just Jews there are more Caribbean stations but there are about
four or five Orthodox Jewish stations where I am and they were on WALK's
frequency and they were busted about two years ago and now they're on
95.1 and sometimes they still air their old IDs from 97.5 and when they were
busted here's something I've observed that the communities that these stations
are targeted to the community and why should they they don't really know that
they're illegal stations they just think that this is our station. So there was a
whole hue and cry why why is JRoot Radio off 97.5? That like sense of
ownership that comes with that impact the thing that it the fact that it does
serve. I've seen they have websites sometimes some of them even sell
advertising I don't know how they do that. Yeah you're showing ads for
different restaurants or the things like that we've heard a lot of that kind of
stuff. Yeah a lot of ad blocks. At my talk I'm gonna have this big chart I've
compiled and probably three-quarters of the station have or had websites. But
what you say about the cost factor really resonates because even when
you're dealing with completely legal entities I know some experience with the
other radio station I work with WUSB we have a perfectly legal signal that is
supposed to reach a particular area but yet there's 100 watt station in
Connecticut that completely obliterates the signal on the north shore of Long
Island and that's a legal station too but it's not supposed to be going that
far but without a lot of money to pursue it there's nothing you can do and we've
been told that so many times powerless and and and it's it's true both in the
pirate world and outside the pirate world. I think I have a sample that can
speak to this I was talking about 91.7 earlier and late in the afternoon you
can hear a station from West Orange New Jersey called La Main Street they sign
on about three or four it's an Andean station for the Ecuadorian community
Andean music and and this I think also underscores why the pirates are on the
air because I've never heard that on any of the brokered stations that you
can buy time so this is an example of La Main Street they're on the air and then
a local Caribbean station comes on it's on number seven. You know it'd be great
just to have a guide that people can easily reference but if you publish a
guide like that then it's also easier to crack down on them. Well you know they're
on the air they're giving out their numbers and their websites I don't want
to crack down but I think this is a really interesting cultural phenomenon
and I am working on funding an online map which you can not see where they're
located because I don't know but you can see the coverage areas you can click you
can hear links and interviews you can hear people on both sides of the
unlicensed license divide but right it is kind of touchy.
Bernie did you have something? Yeah I just wanted to say you were talking
about the so inexpensive at the cost of entry has plummeted to set up an illegal
FM broadcast station now that you could go on eBay and just search for FM
broadcast transmitter you can find tons of them for like 50 bucks for like a 10
10 15 watt station which will broadcast for several miles and that comet 95 SL
antenna is like about a hundred less than a hundred dollars so basically for
under $200 for about 200 some dollars if you already have studio gear you have
the transmitter and a feed line in the antenna this is chump change and people
are doing it now because it's so inexpensive and I don't see how the FCC
can possibly stop it. We're starting to sound like shop at home for pirate radio
here if you do this please don't broadcast on 99.5 well actually what
happens if they do broadcast on a commercial right smack on top of a
commercial station how much interference can they cause? A lot I mean WNYC there
was a station on 94.1 right next to it and there's a great Twitter list called
BK pirate watch and the actress Martha Plimpton found them and said I'm trying
to listen to WNYC at all things considered and but I'm hearing you know
reggae music and so she was informed that that 94.1 was a pirate and was
interfering now 94.1 has been gone for a while. Did she stick with the reggae?
Did she go back to all things considered? I'm not sure. I might try to follow up with her and I know and having
spoken with Ken Friedman a few days ago they're constantly plagued by a station
on 90.9 Radio Independence. Oh really? Yeah which is a Haitian station and to
the to the degree actually I think there was another road march another station
in Newark was interfering with FMU's second station in Hudson County. Okay.
MFU I believe. Yeah so even though they were in Newark they and on 90.1 not
91.1 they were cutting into the edge of their frequency. Wow. Yeah so it does
affect you know the smaller stations and the non-commercial stations more than it
does the commercial one so I would I would advise if I if pirate radio people
listen to me at all that you you take commercial frequencies frequencies
above 92 and of course we're above 92 as well we're the exception but you know a
lot of stations there they're a lot more powerful and and actually there's a lot
more space between them. There are a lot in the in the non-commercial band
between 87.9 and 91.9 they're probably eight you know where I am and again
talking to Ken Friedman and I'll excerpt some from his interview of my talk he
was you know like they're they're operating as commercial stations on
non-commercial band and so that irritated him you know in addition to
all the other problems that he's suffering. So you could play now this is
on Main Street in 91.7 and they're on the air until suddenly a Flatbush station
comes on. So this is the Ecuadorian. This is the Ecuadorian. From Jersey. Yeah. Okay and
we're gonna hear another station. Sign on right on top of it another pirate
station. At the same time or do they wait for them to sign off? No. Oh so there's an
anarchy. This happens a lot. All right let's take a listen to this.
Jueve estamos en bases. No no pero huele huele como que huele ya. Jueve con esa alegría que pone el DJ.
Jueve con esa alegría que pone el DJ. Jueve con esa alegría que pone el DJ.
Wow so they completely obliterated them didn't they? Yes and so the West Orange
station was I don't know probably about 16 miles from me but this was a station
within a mile or two mile radius. It's exciting it reminds me you mentioned the
shortwave of listening you know hearing a station going off the air then another
signal you hear the interval signals and and different language perhaps you know
shortwave it's not that exciting anymore is it? It's really not and this is it's
kind of interesting and I don't know really many you know radio hobbyists who
like love to take lists of stations. Looking at these scenes I sort of made
an effort in that direction to try to codify what's out there and that happens
a lot I mean there are some stations that have really good tech and a really
good sound but even the best sounding station you could tell they don't have
or band processing they don't have that like extra slick part but a lot of them
even though they're interesting and they're serving an underserved community
they have very poor tech. There are stations that skip for hours I can play
one at some point. A CD skipping? Yeah you want to go to number nine?
Number nine sure, I gotta hear this. So which station is this? This is Radio Liberté it's a
Haitian station on 89.7 it's crammed right between 89.5 WSOU a called station
and WKCR 89.9 and it's it's interfering with their HD carriers as well as the
main station. Okay and we're gonna hear a skip all right.
Well you know it's a mix between Laurie Anderson and Panda Bear I think. I would
listen to that in fact you know I hate to say but we've skipped records longer
than that. Well when I when I found this it went on for about 20 minutes before
it returned to the regular programming but in the early years when I wasn't
paying super close attention I had a small child and you know but often you
would hear this it was not uncommon to hear a skipping station. It wasn't
uncommon in the past either if you listen to radio in the 70s and 80s you
heard mistakes you heard sloppiness and today there's too much emphasis on being
polished and sounding like everybody else so it's good to hear the the human
aspect of it. Well there that is really there and if you if you want to hear
another cut this is the same station this actually no it's a different
station but another Haitian station called Laval du Pouple this this was the
Caribbean station that jumped on on the Ecuadorian station. Is this number 10?
This is this is number eight it's it's sort of a sign on it's very reminiscent
of shortwave radio interval signal sign on. Oh really? Yeah. I love interval signals.
Okay so this is a Haitian station you say? Yes and this went on for about 20
minutes this is just five seconds of it. Okay.
Wow that's that's great just I never heard an interval signal that had a
voice like that. Yeah it doesn't sound digitized and then I guess they just
looped it I don't they don't usually sign on this way I've never heard it on
that station frequency again and now this station Laval du Pouple they may be
under another name because I've heard other IDs but it's it's often I think
it's possible that some of these stations are brokering time to people
who run streams it's just it's hard to know I'm trying to learn more about the
model. I'm just blown away by your collection that that you've got and
these are real like these these happenings are just sort of mayflies you
know they they would happen to never be heard from again if they were heard at
all in the first place and here you are collecting them I know archivists like
our friend Jason Scott would go nuts over this kind of thing because this is
something that is going on just subtly behind the scenes for most people and
and what what led you to start recording this and gathering your data? Well I do
audio archiving in the shortwave realm it's I've done pieces you know using
things from different archives sometimes my own sometimes other I have a piece I
did for NPR a long time ago on the number stations the the espionage
related stations and and similar projects so I just decided when I had a
little extra time that I was going to try to record this scene when I first
heard it or that seemed very monolithic to me it was a lot of Soka you know a
lot of reggae but the more I listen you start to hear anomalies I don't know if
you have time for any more samples but... Sure, I could do this all night this is
awesome. On 91 another 917 which usually has La Va Du Pueblo the Haitian station
locally and that Ecuadorian station La Main Street one day I tuned in and I
heard number six which I call a mystery station and I heard it one time. Okay so
this is from where again? This is a it's a 917 I think it's somewhere in
Flatbush, Midwood, Brooklyn it came I heard it once I never heard it
again it seems to be in Uzbeki or Turkish broadcast. Fascinating okay let's
take a listen to this.
TUTKU FM TURKISH RADIO PRESENTS
TUTKU FM TURKISH RADIO PRESENTS
TUTKU FM TURKISH RADIO PRESENTS
TUTKU FM TURKISH RADIO PRESENTS
TUTKU FM TURKISH RADIO PRESENTS
TUTKU FM TURKISH RADIO PRESENTS
TUTKU FM TURKISH RADIO PRESENTS
So I had a question have you noticed any subterfuge or ways they try to mask where they are in other words like you mentioned
brokering a little bit to do the stations ever say they're one thing and
then they're really in another place they try to maybe make it sound like
they're much further away or in another part of the country is that good tactic
if they're not doing that I haven't noticed that but what you do hear a lot
is feed from stations in the Caribbean sometimes they'll name check other cities
this kind of scene is also very big in Boston and Miami okay in the same way
but I don't know that I think it's already so murky and chaotic that they
don't really need to do that but I think they're always sort of moving their
locations around okay physically let me ask you this is this something that's
particularly unique to New York or does this happen all over the country
it seems to be big in New York Boston and Miami
Miami has a lot of Haitian stations in particular I was in Boston in the fall
and a casual tune I counted about 15 on an evening what is about Haitian stations
that make them so prevalent that's an interesting question I think
radio is very prime in a lot of Caribbean cultures and so it's sort of very important
to be on the air of the literacy late rate is somewhat low in Haiti so
hearing news on the radio is very ingrained in the culture so I think
that's that's part of it interesting Wow Bernie any
any final questions from you yeah this is going to be an amazing talk at
the 11th hope July 22nd July 22nd right this Friday
this talk is scheduled for 7 p.m. in the Friedman room it's called tuning into New York
City's pirates of the air and David will be playing some some excerpts
and talking about all this it's it's really I just wanted to I wanted to also mention David has an amazing
website called shortwave ology dotnet he's too he's too
modest to plug his own website on the air here
but I highly recommend shortwave ology dotnet and I met David years ago even though we
lived in the same place at one time I met him at the annual S.W.L.
fest if you check out S.W.L. fest dot com it's where I've met amazed a lot
of amazing radio people it's outside of Philadelphia I met David I met
Mark Fahey who gave a talk about North Korea at the most recent
conference and we're doing an amazing talk about monitoring radio and television from around the world this year
a lot of great content worth coming to hope for so don't miss it can
we go out with one more just give me a number and all yeah so first I'll just say thanks to
Ed for the promotion that shortwave ology dotnet has a lot of shortwave related material
I have a soundcloud dot com slash shortwave ology site that has
July 4th band scan that I did two and a half hour band scan of the pirates and a lot of
things that people can dive into let's go out on some of
these stations have really great ideas go to number five this is the station triple nine
the blood sucka
Okay, this is not 99.9, it's 99.5. David Gorin, thank you so much for sharing this with us.
It's great being here, thanks for having me.
And we will see you at Hope, and we'll see hopefully a lot of our listeners at Hope.
We'll be back in, I think, three weeks. Write to us, oth at 2600.com, and stay tuned for the
Personal Computer Show. Good night.
Bye.