Exploring Creativity with Peter Tunney

Peter Tunney is an artist known for his bold creativity and unrelenting optimism. Peter shares insights into his extraordinary life, from his turbulent journey in Wall Street to becoming a renowned artist in Wynwood, Miami. The conversation delves into his struggles with addiction, moments of profound gratitude, and the transformative power of art.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I was living across the hall from this failed not failed,

(00:04):
struggling pants design an amazing guy named John Barbados. I
was like, John, look at this, Look at this? Wow,
what's going on? What are you gonna do? And literally,
I'm pretty sure, I went like this, I'm gonna be
an artist now. He said, but wait, like you just
told me you're having this success, You're gonna have your

(00:24):
own firm. Like I never knew you made art or
wanted to be an artist, and so I just thought
of it. I'm gonna be an artist now. It's gonna
be great. And he said, well, what are you gonna do?
I said, you know, I'm gonna wear my pajamas to dinner.
I'm gonna paint my apartment white. I have a bunch
of cute girls running around. It's going to be a maiden,
he said, But don't you have to make something. The

(00:46):
first thing he said to me is I just want
to remind you of something fatal and progressive. Mm, fatal
and progressive. It's if I almost cried just telling you that.
You know, there's no graduation from this ship. And that's
not the bad news. That's the good news, bro. The
bad news is you've been on the ground for twenty years.
You broke everybody's heart. So it's fatal and progressive and

(01:09):
so like, my disease is coming from me now. I
didn't get over anything. I've let my guard down. I'm drifting.
The first thing I'm going to do is my head
is going to be poor me, poor me. You know,
I became grateful. I would say, is the best gift
that I got. And this old guy said to me,

(01:32):
You know, Peter Tunney, gratitude is not what you say
when you get what you want. Gratitude is what you
have left when you don't get what you do.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
Welcome back to the Sino Show.

Speaker 3 (01:52):
Today, we're diving into the world of bold creativity, fearless expression,
and relenting optimism with a guest who embodies all three.
He's my brother. He's an artist, He's a provocative here.
He's a master transforming chaos into beauty. His work isn't
just something you see, it's something you feel, whether it's

(02:16):
his iconic text based pieces that screen messages of hope
and urgency, or his ability to turn unexpected materials into
powerful statements. He's been pushing boundaries for decades from Wall
Street to the art world. Is journey is anything but conventional,
and his impact is undeniable. It's my pleasure to welcome

(02:39):
the one and only mister Peter Toney to the show.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
Welcome brother. It was a great intro. I'll try to
live up to some of that shit.

Speaker 3 (02:47):
Well, I think you can. I've got to open that up.
You know, if I'm Ferris Bueller, you're Willy Wonka.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
I've gotten the Willy Wonka before. They now called me.
I didn't give it. They called me the Wizard of Windwood.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
Yeah, well you are. And thanks for being here.

Speaker 3 (03:01):
Man. This is a real blessing. And I just got
to say, how did this happen?

Speaker 2 (03:05):
You know? I got to just pull up this amazing
book here.

Speaker 3 (03:08):
I'll be out of focus here, Mike, that I got
last week.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
Show this to the ah right.

Speaker 3 (03:15):
Yeah see everyone can see that, which you, of course
are featured in. I like, I need to call my
brother Peter, check in on him and have to see
if he's opening to being a guest on my show.
That just dropped it on me. We haven't spoken a while.
I call you and let's talk about that conversation.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
How it happened to me? Was on that fateful day.
I was not unexplicably, we could probably explain it. But
I was about as dark and down as I can
recall in my life. I don't have a lot of
great reasons for that. It was not a lot different
than the day before. But that day it was pulling

(03:54):
me in. The monster was pulling me into the black quicksand.
And I called a friend and I was at the
airport in New York coming back to Miami. I just
finished a big job in New York. It all went
really well. I should have been walking on air. And
I called him up and he just, unbeknownst to me,
he just patched in his other brother. They both have

(04:15):
forty years of sobriety. And the other guy that I
never met in my wife never heard his voice or
anything about one sentence in he said, So, Peter, tell
me what's wrong. It's like wow, and it's like the
clock stopped. It's like my heart stopped. I guess I
felt like telling him, and so of course I said

(04:39):
everything that they're all the money, the light of this
knows excet. I just unloaded. He said, you missed the
one thing that is wrong, that's you. It's like wow.
So we got into it for twenty six minutes before
I took off. I couldn't get the next words out
of my mouth. I couldn't say them. Tim, I was

(05:01):
so choked up, but I just burst out crying like
a baby. It was like the whole thing cracked open.
We had this incredible phone call. So between us, the
three of us, we have one hundred years of sobriety.
It's amazing how you got one hundred years of sobriety
and not no shit. Right. So there I am, and
they said things that just resonated with me. And they

(05:22):
both told me at twenty years they struggled, I got
out of rehab twenty years ago last month, and that
they had to become newcomers again. They didn't pick up,
but they were fucked up, and it was like, yeah,
what do I do? So they said you got to
become a newcomer again. I was drifting from the program
and it was said to me once early on I

(05:43):
heard someone say people don't quit this program. They drift
away and then they died. Yes, wow wolf, So I
was telling him I'm drifting. We said you got to
become a newcomer again. I fly to Miami. I'm waiting
for my luggage, and you fucking called me and said, yeah, brother,
I don't know, Like that's my story of how this happened.

(06:05):
And then I spoke at your meeting and listen, the
next day, all that shit was gone somewhere, like washed
out with the tide. Hard to believe. I'm almost embarrassed
to say it, you know, because I was so damn.

Speaker 3 (06:18):
M Yeah, that was a magic when he dropped some
beautiful light on the boys here that Saturday here at
Shell Avenue. Because you were so humble and you were
so honest, and you know, you could have talked about
all the extraordinary things you've done in the world, but
you said, I'm hurting.

Speaker 2 (06:33):
I'm hurting.

Speaker 3 (06:33):
My heart's hurting, I'm broken, you know, and you laid
it down and so I thank you for that, and
I love you for that.

Speaker 2 (06:39):
You know. Let's just go back a little bit, man.
You know you grew up in Long Island.

Speaker 3 (06:45):
We could let's just start with the accident, because I
think that's a good place to start.

Speaker 1 (06:49):
Yeah, well, a lot of things happened. So I got
hit by a car fifty years ago this May. It
was on my bicyclub was coming down a very long hill.
I was playing tennis. It was a real hot day,
like one hundred and five degrees. We can only play
like two games. And it's a very long hill, which
I've been one thousand times. It's where you can go
in your ten speed so fast you can't pedal, you know,

(07:11):
you just like this, You're flying right. And I have
no recollection of the impact of the accident, but I
was going across an intersection and she was coming up
and just blasted me full contact. And I know now
how that accident happened. And it happened because I'm sure
I thought I could make it across by a little bit,
but I would make it. But she didn't think I

(07:33):
was going to make it across, and she swerved a
little bit. She went over the double yellow line and blasted.
So I woke up some weeks later in the hospital.
I was up to my armpits and a cast. My
leg was strung up, I'd hole drilled in me, my
arm was up. I looked like something out of a
horror movie, you know, black and blue from the top

(07:56):
of my forehead to my toes, just massive injuries. Wondering
what the fuck happened. I didn't believe it. They told
me I got hit by a car. I thought it
was in a dream. Many times over the next year,
I thought it was all a dream or simulation or something,
because I just couldn't believe that this was going to
be my life. I just couldn't accept that. And from
that moment I woke up by the way, I was

(08:18):
on increased injections of demarroll for the next seven months.

Speaker 2 (08:22):
And how old were you then?

Speaker 1 (08:23):
Thirteen and a half?

Speaker 2 (08:25):
Thirteen and a half?

Speaker 1 (08:25):
Got it. It was just brought to my attention, kind
of embarrassingly but interestingly, sit in New York visiting with
an old friend. He said, do you think it's possible
that when you got hit by a car, like you
were dead for a second and then God saved you,
but he kept you at thirteen and a half years
old forever.

Speaker 2 (08:47):
Wow?

Speaker 1 (08:48):
Wow, let me just process for a minute. Oh yeah,
that would explain it all. That would explain it all.
That fits me like a glove. Even talking to you,
I feel like I'm talking to my dad right now.
I can just see me over there. A lot of
times I'm in a group, people take a picture, I'm
like who's that old guy in the corner, because I
felt like they were my parents this whole time. I've

(09:09):
done everything like a thirteen and a half year old.
So that's the accident.

Speaker 2 (09:14):
And when did you learn magic tricks?

Speaker 1 (09:16):
Yeah? So like Ferris, you know, in my school, I
was like star of the school play, wore a blazer
at a kindergarten. I was just that guy. I was
very good at school. It was easy for me in
my whole life. I never really studied at school. It
just all just flowed into me. And kids at my school,
like Ferris is like, what are we going to get?

(09:37):
Were a little broken pity? Is it get well gift?
And so the teacher called my mother and she said, well,
he likes magic. So people chipped in and they sent
me magic tricks, and the word got around some of
my neighbors, my aunt, everybody got me magic. And God
blessed my mom for saying that because it was quite
a while.

Speaker 2 (09:57):
You know.

Speaker 1 (09:57):
It was flat on my back for like seven months,
so I only had my arms. I couldn't sit up.
I was casting up to hear. I think, by the way,
if you gave me that prognosis today, that I'd have
to lie still on my back and can't sit up
for seven months. I'd take my life, I called it today.
Thinking of that, I couldn't do it. They also don't
tell you when you're a kid, you know you're heading

(10:18):
into fifteen surgeries over the next ten years and you're
going to be in a cast most of the time.
They don't tell you that for good reason, because none
of us could handle that, especially at that age. So
they sent me magic. So I practiced light ofvan. If
we're good at the end of this, I'll do some
sleight of hand on the camera for you. So I
practiced light of hand in the hospital. I was a
funny guy anyway, and a performer. I was in pediatrics.

(10:40):
I was one of three beds, and so I probably
saw five hundred kids during my tenure there, you know,
and I practiced magic on them. Then when they could
wheel me around, they wheeled me around the hospital. Was
do magic upside down like this because it was the
only way to do it. And when I got out
of the hospital, all my friends, you know what you
did then, was you shoveled snow or mode lawns or
painted something someone's house, broage doors. But I couldn't do

(11:01):
any of those things. So I became a professional.

Speaker 3 (11:03):
Magician, right And let me ask you something. I love
that story, Peter. What you're one of the most empathetic people.

Speaker 2 (11:12):
I know.

Speaker 3 (11:13):
What was in you about knowing even then to get
out of yourself and help people?

Speaker 2 (11:17):
How did you know that? Tell me about that.

Speaker 1 (11:20):
You know, it's incredible for me to look back on
all that time and even talk to my family about it.
There was obviously hard days and tears, but somehow I
kind of breathed through all that stuff. I was mainly
worried about would I be deformed, would girls ever talk

(11:40):
to me? Would I go to school? What would it
be like? Will I'd be the cripple kid? Those were
that's what filled up my negative thoughts and my positive thoughts.
I'm telling you, bro, I came out of that womb.
They just pressed play. I didn't make any of these decisions.
I wasn't some humanitarian. I just naturally entertained everybody in
my room. And then when their parents came because they

(12:02):
were down, I entertained them too. You know, I some
of the stuff in the hospital. I so it's really bad,
you know, someone losing your kid or stuff like that.
It's really heavy, and I went through all that. I
don't have any negative memories of it. I have memories
of painful things that happen. Somebody hit this pan, it
went through my knee and you just, you know, you

(12:24):
convulse and throw up and black out and shit. That
happened ten times. I remember. I have very bad memories
of going to therapy. To get you to stand up,
they strap you on a table and they tilt you
up a little further than you've bend for the last
seven months, and your blood drains out of your head,
your face turns white, and you feel like lightning going
through your arteries and veins. Your feet turned black, you

(12:46):
feel like you're gonna explode. You shake, your convulse, you
pass throw up. So I did that, and the next
day they're like, come on, we're going back and thirty
days you'll be standing. I was like, I'll never fucking
go back to that. I did all thirty days and
I stood up in my bodycase. Then they got me
walking a little bit, and you know, looking back at
all of that, I just wanted to get through the

(13:08):
therapy so I could do magic for my friends. I
wanted to get through therapy because maybe I had a
visit that day or something. You know, unlike TV movies,
all your friends don't visit you every day when you're
in the hospital for five months. You know, first of all,
in the first month they can't really you're really a wreck.
And then once in a while, but you know, they
played sports after school. My main thought the whole time,

(13:29):
my recurring thought was I just can't wait to go back.

Speaker 3 (13:32):
To schoo got it, got it, got it, man. And
you know, one of the things, partly one of the
reasons why I wanted you on the show is you
always fucking figure our way out. You always you figure
something out.

Speaker 1 (13:47):
Man.

Speaker 2 (13:47):
You figure you'r a solution guy.

Speaker 1 (13:50):
You know.

Speaker 3 (13:50):
Also, you were also a natural salesman. Maybe we talk
about yourself, kind of walk our way into New York
City and then let's kind of just start talking a
little bit, how your addiction's progressing a little bit.

Speaker 1 (14:04):
So I was always a good salesman. In Boy Scouts,
we sold light bulbs door to door. I could give
you the pitch right now, you'd buy two dozen bulbs
from me. It was irresistible. I sold more light bulbs
than probably every other boy scout put together in my
area and my troop, and I won a prize, just
to put in perspective. I won a twenty five or
fifty dollars gift certificate to a camping store in Long Island,

(14:26):
so I could get a backpack and a canteen and
stuff like that. But I was relentless. I did door
to door sales and light bulbs and after I and
you know, I put all this together really in sobriety
that I was always a salesman. It's pretty obvious. I
became a car salesman. A guy walked in one day.

(14:46):
I sold him a car, and then he said, god,
you're a great salesman. My wife needs a car too.
I said, let's call her up, so he said right now.
I said sure. So I sold her car over the phone.
It's a Honda, a cord hatchback. He bought the four
door stick no air. He was saving money. And he said, boy,
you're like, you're the greatest salesman i've ever met. You
should come to Wall Street. You make a million dollars.

(15:06):
And I said, I want to go to Wall Street
and make a million dollars. And I went to work
at a firm called Paine Weber. That's how I got
there and there because I had so much time in
the hospital, I studied everything. I thought everybody read everything.
Little did I know nobody read anything. I couldn't believe it,
and so I read everything. And one thing came across

(15:27):
my desk was like a Thermo picture of a heart.
It was for a company called Genintech, and I was
reading through it. I was like, oh my god, They're
can make a billion dollars if this worked. The drug
was called TPA. It's called tissue type plas Mintage and activations.
Here's how I sold it to really rich guys. It's
draino for your arteries. Your husband's lying on the floor dying,

(15:49):
you give him a shot, he lives. That's it. And
he raised tens of millions dollars based on that pitch,
and I became the boy wondered at biotechnology. I understood
the medicine and the science from a different point of
view than most people. From the inside. I was a
smart kid, so I learned a lot when I was
in the hospital. I learned a lot of medical stuff
in the hospital. And remember I was in the hospital

(16:10):
at first, but I kept going back for a month,
year and two months there and all that stuff. So
I knew all the medical terms in the jargon, and
I became salesman. I was selling biotechnology to the world
in nineteen eighty five.

Speaker 3 (16:24):
Wow, right, and you got it on am Gin. You
got it on some big stuff, right.

Speaker 1 (16:30):
I did you know Amgen? I got in big time
on Amgen, and that really changed my life. You know,
that's how we became an artist. But I'll just tell
you one fun story about Amgen. So I knew from
reading that you would have to go do due diligence
on any company you were going to invest in. I'm
a retail stockbroker in Melville, Long Island, but I knew
this rule, and so I flew out to Amgen on

(16:52):
a coach ticket. I didn't tell anybody, and I knocked
don I went there. They had three hundred people at
the time. It was about a three hundred million dollar
cap company today eight one hundred and fifty billion dollar
cap company. And I met the then chairman, George Rathman,
who was in a very important banking relationship with Payne Weber,
and I knew the chairman of Paine Weber was also
the president of MoMA at the time, Donald Maron, and

(17:15):
remained friendly with him until the end of our life.
He was just a great guy. Always treated me like
a prince. And so they said, you know, the secretary
must have said, you know, I gave him my card,
and then George Rathma must have looked at him and said,
I wonder what Paine Weber's doing here. I thought we
finished this when I thought we were done. So he
must have called Don Marin or someone like that and said,

(17:36):
you know, you've got Peter Tunney out. He said, you
have someone here in our office from Paine Weber said,
we don't have anybody out there today. He said, no,
you do. The guy's name is Peter Tunney. And because
I knew them for thirty years, after that, we all
joke about it. Don said to him, just meet with him.
It'll be easier. That was the quote that I heard.
But I go into George's office. He's like the Bill

(17:56):
Gates of computers. You know, George was really the father
of biotechnol you in a big way. And he said, so,
Peter Tunney, what could I do for you today? I said, well,
you know, I just want to get a little eye contact,
look you in the eye. I find out what kind
of guy you are. I'd like to meet your top
ten personnel, get a full walk of your facility, and
ear your plans for the future. He was like taking aback,

(18:18):
and I was like, what's the problem. I'm thinking of
investing some of my clients' money. This is my due diligence.
Excuse me, he said, well, this has never happened to
me before. I've never even heard of anybody. He said,
you never heard of it. He doesn't everybody do this,
he said, nobody does this. So I got the tour
of the facility, I met the ten top people. They

(18:40):
stayed in my life for twenty five years. I started
other companies with some of them, and so began my
interest in Amzin. When I came back to New York
forty eight hours later. Of course I'm the world experts
in biotechnology.

Speaker 2 (18:53):
Of course you are.

Speaker 1 (18:53):
Of course, Wow wow wow wow.

Speaker 3 (18:57):
But see once again the gumption get on the plane
and just go to the guy's office.

Speaker 2 (19:03):
You know, there was no condumption.

Speaker 1 (19:04):
I thought I had to do it. You know, like
a lot of this stuff looks like I was a
fucking genius. I was so hapless. I just thought I
had to go there. How would I tell my clients
to invest? I was like nervous, you know, I wanted
to know everything. I still want to know everything about everything.

Speaker 2 (19:20):
Yeah, I love that about you.

Speaker 3 (19:21):
Your curiosity is insane. I love it, man, It's one
of the big things I love about you. So why
don't we do this, buddy? Why do we walk the
transition from Wall Street to the art world?

Speaker 1 (19:33):
So it's easy. So I became a good producer and
selling these products. They were off balance sheet finance transactions,
mostly in biotechnology, but also in other areas too, solid
state devices, advanced materials, stuff like that, and so that's
really all I did. I didn't really buy, and so
stocksa bonds or anything. We waited and then I would

(19:55):
send out the perspectives to like three hundred clients, and
so those were like syndicate deals. Maybe there was eight
hundred units of AMJEL. We had four hundred offices and
four thousand brokers, so each office got two units, but
I might have got like twelve units. You know, I
would because I could sell. And after the stock market crashed,
some guy called me, I remember his name, Hope he

(20:16):
watches this bill logier from Des Moines, Iowa office. Peter Twani,
I got one of these am gaen clinical partner ships.
How you and a my client has wiped out a margin.
This the day after the stock market cresh in eighteen
eighty seven, and he said, would you give me ten
thousand dollars for well? I had a client that wanted
five units. I could only give them one and a

(20:37):
half units. I called them up, I said, you want
another unit and ten cents on a dollar said they
did under one condition. I'll buy it from me, but
if you get any more, you call me first. So
I thought, where can I get more? So I did illegally, apparently,
or broke some rule. I sent out a wire. I
bribed the girl in the cage. I set it a

(20:58):
wire to four thousand pain Weber brokeoker said anybody else
want to get liquid in these R and D partnerships?
And my phone rang off the hook. Shortly after that,
I left Payne Weber because I found a lot of them,
and I called the guy said, listen, I've got X
amount of units we could buy him for this. Here's
what I'm thinking. I'm going to quit my job. At
Payne Weber. You put up the money, we'll be seventy
thirty partners. He said, I'll put up the money. I

(21:21):
said fifty to fifty. He said, I'll put up the money.
We'll be seventy thirty partners, seventy meter thirty year. I said,
I'll do that, but you have to write me a
check today for I was going to say two hundred
thousand dollars, but I said two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
He said, okay. So I went down his office, I
picked up this check. I came back to my apartment
on sixtieth Street in New York City, had my little check.

(21:43):
I was living across the hall from this failed not
failed struggling pants designed an amazing guy named John Barbados.
I was like, John, look at this, look at this.
Said Wow, what's going on? What are you going to do?
And literally I'm pretty sure. I went like this, I'm
going to be an artist now. He said, but wait,

(22:05):
like you just told me you're having this success, you're
going to have your own firm. Like I never knew
you made art or wanted to be an artist. I said,
I just thought of it. I'm going to be an artist. Now.
It's going to be great. And he said, well, what
are you going to do? I said, you know, I'm
gonna wear my pajamas to dinner. I'm gonna paint my
apartment white. I have a bunch of cute girls running around.
It's going to be amazing. He said, but don't you

(22:28):
have to make something? I said, I get that. I'm
gonna set it up. Look at this, check what is this?
Twenty five years of rent. I'm just going to do it.
And so I declared myself an artist in eighty seven,
eighty eight. And that is really the dumbest thing I've
ever done in my life, right, I'm mean, a crazy
thing to do, and I'd never made art. I'm interested
in art at that point because I had gone to

(22:50):
every opening up moment and stuff with the chairman of
Payne Weber and met these people and I was amazed.
I saw van Go and Matiz and stuff like that.
But I didn't really have any vernacular. I certainly didn't
have any craft. I didn't have anything. And I just
declared myself an artist and became an artist. Over the
next few years, we made a lot of money and
moved into a giant mansion in New York City on

(23:13):
ninety second Street. This is a double townhouse built by
the Rockefellers, like twenty eight or twenty nine years old.
And I just moved in there. And I'm an artist
and this is my mansion. I'm making shit and I
was just always too embarrassed to stop, and so here
I am so okay.

Speaker 3 (23:31):
But hang on, man, And how did Peter Beard come
in your consciousness and talk about those those travels?

Speaker 2 (23:36):
That was like a ten year dad.

Speaker 1 (23:38):
Right, yeah, so you know, Peter Beard an amazing force
of nature. I had picked up a book at Resoli,
like pretending I was an intellectual or interested in art,
and I bought a book called The End of the Game.
And I had that book in my house and the house.
Really it's like a movie, you know, with a guy

(24:00):
wins the lottery and he puts like a toy slide
in his house and stuff like that. For example, in
my living room, I had one hundred bales of hay
for about five years, just as one example, but lots
of it was really Willie warmcas. I was had ten bathrooms,
ten fireplaces, house, old staff, you know, And in this
one room I had done totally with bamboo. Was a

(24:20):
double room, you know the width of the double house,
fireplace at each end. I bambooed everything in the house,
bamboo lights, bamboo everything. And I had a woman at
the time that was making She was this Israeli textile
genius and she could make things have relief and she
would like to do people's carpeting that would look like

(24:40):
stones in Rome or something like that. They would have
a little relief but was soft. So I said, well,
if you could do that from a photo she was
doing my stairs, I said, couldn't we do this? And
I opened up the Peter Beard book and the picture
is this airplane flying over elephant that's dead in the shadow.
So why don't we make that into an air for

(25:00):
this room, to the bamboo room. And so we did that.
It was fucking amazing. I wish I saw. I have
no idea where it was. It was like ten feet
by ten feet airplane flying over the bones Peter Beard
in the carpet with some color and relief. And so
some guy that knew Peter Beard was over my house
for one of these kookie events I used to do
in dinners, and he said, I know that photo. That's

(25:21):
Peter Beard. He's a good friend of mine. I'm going
to bring him over. So Peter Beard comes over to
my house. He looked at the carpet and he also
walked up through the house and realizes like wow. And
he comes from big blue blood background, so it was
just wow that the place like this existed. He was like, man,
that carpet is better than any photograph ever. That thing

(25:43):
is unbelieved, you know. And it is from that day
that I stuck with Peter Beard for about ten years.

Speaker 3 (25:51):
And talk about some of those trips out Africa. What
did you see that inspired you learned a lot? You
started taking pictures right, you know.

Speaker 1 (26:01):
I was always kind of assisting and helping Peter curating
and do stuff. How it happened was Peter had like
a ton of stuff and he said, do you mind
if I keep this stuff in your basement of your gallery.
I should say that I also leased like a twenty
thousand square foot gallery in Soho at that time on
two floors, called the Time is Always Now Gallery. I thought,
I'm an artist on my own gallery. It's going to

(26:23):
be amazing. I had no idea what I was doing.
I think the first couple of years of the gallery,
I might have spent a few million dollars, and I
think we did like eleven eight hundred dollars in close
sale to give you an idea of the setup. And
on January twentieth, nineteen ninety one, I had a flood

(26:44):
in the gallery. I had just finished building it, and
there was like a hole on the floor. It was
a lot of construction. The basement was filled up with
like huge pieces of rocks and pipes and water, and
it took us an extra year to get everything out
of the basement. I finished the basement, beautiful place. And
the last thing you do is you paint the floor
right by the stairs, and then you walk up the

(27:05):
stairs and you're done. And I painted that floor on
the night of January nineteenth, and I went back up
to what we call the Big House on ninety second
Street and I got a call at three in the morning,
some alarm went off somewhere. I went down there and
a water main on Boom Street had broken, and my
basement was filled up with seven feet of ice water.
Everything wow. And then the oil burner blew up and

(27:28):
put a little oil on top of everything. So when
they finally drained it, which took like ten days. Every
single object, painting, everything, computer all covered in oil and trash.
And when I went there, I went to go down
the stairs. You could see through the little door window,
but the water was like up to the window. It's
about your chin. You know, it's like, holy shit, you
can't go down there. The electric boxes are under and

(27:49):
you're on the metal stairs. That was a pretty shocking
gutting feeling that all that work was gone. So Peter
Beard shows up a few days later. This guy had
made me a battleship at a toilet, paper rolls and
paper towel rolls and cardboard. It was like a ten
foot long battleship, painted battleship gray. He must have worked

(28:10):
on it for a year. I think I bought it
from for a thousand bucks. When Peter Beard walked in,
the gallery was drained out of water, and on the
floor was this battleship. It was about the width the
height of a pancake. You know, it was just like
a battleship stain and Peter Beard, of course, whatever you say,
that's the best piece of art in here. Look at
that thing. It's amazing to flat back. That was really

(28:32):
our first moment together in the gallery, and then all
of this stuff came in and we used to spend
late nights down there going through everything, and you know,
I would say, like Peter, what's this picture? I had
boxes and boxes of what's this picture? So that's my
first photo of Africa. I went with Darwin's grandson. That's
an element. Oh and what's this all? I met Picasso
at this bullfight and we did that for a long

(28:54):
time for years, and I kind of got all that
material together, and I just had a hankering to do
a retrospective for Peter Beard, and so we did. I
did a big retrospective for Peter in Paris, and right
before the retrospective, I went to Africa with him. I
came back girly, and a couple of days after I
had left, he got hit by an elephant. The conflict

(29:17):
an elephant boy hit by elephant on the eve of
his first major retrospective was a big deal. And we
didn't even have internet, right, everybody heard about that around
the world. We had video of the whole thing, and
so when the show opened in Paris, I mean everybody
showed up to support Peter Beard and we have this
amazing run, and then that just went on for until

(29:37):
two thousand and two. In January fifteenth, two thousand and two,
the Beards divorced me and I was sitting in my
gallery by myself. Every single thing had been taken out.
The show I had put up for seven years, dismantled,
taken out, gold folks hanging out of the wall, dust
on the floor. It was arguable the addicted to cocaine

(30:01):
and crack and anything else you might have had. Just
sitting there in the middle of the gallery, thinking what
the fuck do I do now? And I was with
this very nice girl. She said, you should make your
own art. I said, well, that's true, because I kind
of stopped making art when Peter Beard showed up. He
became this other job. And I said, yeah, it's about time.
I guess I should. And I did a show which
I opened on February twentieth. It's just like, I don't know,

(30:24):
fifty days later or something less. Thirty days later, and
I had made one hundred and fifty six works of art.
I had no money, I had no materials, I had
no anything. I didn't know I was going to have
to do that. I painted the gallery and I hung
off the show. It was called Peter Tunny, It's about time.
That would be like you coming to Winwood now with
your friends and I'm not here and it's the Sino Gallery.

(30:44):
Like what you know. We were thickest thieves. We were
really loud. Everybody knew us, and suddenly, you know where,
like my best buddy is God, I'm sitting here by myself.
I held my own show. It was like we didn't
even know you were an artist. I had a tent
in the middle of the gallery. I made some of
the weird shit you'd ever think of in your life.
I just take a garbage can cover, I'd put an

(31:04):
s on it. I'd write homage to Douchamp. I had
some books. I nailed them to boards. I said, don't
read this, and I just put up these one hundred
and fifty six pieces. I made a priceless and I
opened and I sold a bunch of stuff. I had
a lot of bills. The gallery rent at the time
was probably sixty thousand a month. To give you an idea, wow,
and so I had a lot of bills to pay off.

(31:25):
And quite a few guys came in and bought stuff,
But mostly I think they were guys that got rich
for me and Amgen and other deals that were still
in my eco. Said, everyone is still in my ecosystem.
The only one I really ever lost with Peter beers
wife to do. And I don't blame I would have
fired me too, But these guys would come in. This

(31:46):
one particular old friend of mine, the wisest old all
of New York City, God bless him, he's gone now.
He came in. He said, oh, Peter, how much did
that thing? I said, ten thousand dollars? He gave me
a check. He says, here's the ten thousand, But do
I have to take it with me?

Speaker 2 (32:00):
That's great.

Speaker 1 (32:01):
I had quite a few guys like that. I didn't
take it with and it was some of the weirdest
shit ever. I sold that stuff, and I wrapped up
the gallery and I closed up the gallery, and basically
at that point I was broken, homeless for how long?

Speaker 3 (32:14):
Broken homeless for a while.

Speaker 1 (32:19):
So that was in at the end of I managed
to keep that show alive till like the summer of
two thousand and three. It's like a year and a half.
I had this big show up. I mean It was
such a money loser, I can't even tell you. And
in two thousand and three, they were building a new
nightclub in New York called the Crowbar. I knew the

(32:39):
guys that were building it, and that was that's the
first time we had a new club in New York
in like twenty five years. We either went to Lotus
or Bungalow the Stays, and they commissioned me to do
a big art project. They have a mandate they're going
to happen part installation in the club. They wanted to
beat me and so I charged them twenty five thousand.
They didn't pay me yet. They did pay I mean

(33:00):
the end, but they didn't pay me at that time.
And I was in the nightclub building my show, which
was called Signs of the Times. I was making signs
with like an industrial manufacturer of street signs, but it
would say, you know, leaving childhood, slow down, time passing,
don't stop, stop signs, stuff like that, me on signs,

(33:21):
lit signs, all kinds of stuff. I spent a ton
of money. I didn't have at bills again. And one morning,
right before that club opened, I had taken over like
a thousand square foot room which was going to be
their VIP room in the club, as my little room
because you know, in those days, you need a little
room while you're working. You need a little herror, a
little table, a little mini bar, maybe a couch, you know,

(33:44):
and said I had a bathroom in it. So they
came in one day rather abruptly and said, Tonny, you
got to clean out of this room by tomorrow morning.
We're opening. We're opening, We're opening. They had cops, nart
squad cops outside. It was really a big deal. It's
a five thousand people nightclub and acts like Sweetish House
Mafia and paul Oakenfeld. We never had that in New York.

(34:04):
That was the first time anybody ever saw anything like that.
Seventy five dollars at the door. I heard these guys
Swedish House Mafia was getting like fifty grand for one night.
We just never dj it was like two hundred bucks.
And so it was a huge club. It was a
big undertaking. So I just said to them, basically because
I was offended they didn't come in and give me

(34:26):
my twenty five grand, and of course I think they're
going to push me around. So I just said to
them with no forethought. I said, actually, I'm not going
to be out of here tomorrow morning. I live here now.
They said, what what do you mean you live here? Said?
I live here now. I'm going to live in this room.
He said, how long are you going to live here?
As soon as he said how long you're going to
live here? I knew I had him a little bit,

(34:47):
so I said, I just said, I'm going to live
here for forty five days. I'm going to break David
Blaine's record. Remember he was in a looseight box over
the Thames for four days, and I always loved David play.
I said, I'm going to break his record. Forty five days.
I'm staying in this room. They're like, listen, you got
to be out of here at nine am tomorrow morning.
I don't want to hear anything about it. Ps I
should say my pit bull was living in there with me,

(35:10):
half black, half white, and her name was Britney Spears.
So that night when they left. You can't make this
shit up right. A lot of people think I own
the building. I squatted, but this is how it really happened.
That night. Because I no longer have a gallery, all
my stuff is in the storage and a friend of
mine had a piece of real estate next to the

(35:31):
Limelight Club in New York City. You don't even know this.
It was an old dentist office. So I moved into
the dentist office with all the shit I could take
from the gallery. But the gallery fills up like ten storages.
I had whatever I needed, and it was leaky. I
had an umbrella over my kitchen table so that my
blow wouldn't get wet. You know what I mean. It
was leaked. Listen, just picture this setup, right. So I

(35:54):
go there. We had a lot of stuff, and the
examining rooms are filled up with stuff. So we went
there and we took everything needed for an installation. I'm
an installer. We went back to the crowbar. Security guys,
my guy, we go upstairs. I had a bunch of
crackheads wallpaper in the room with me with the New
York Post would spray adhesive. We did every inch of
this room. I put all my shit in the windowsills.

(36:15):
I had double queen size bunk beds and the next
morning these guys came in. I was sitting in my
bed with Britney Spears, watching West Side Story on cassette
and they came in. They looked around this time, What
the fuck is going on in here? You fucking crazy?
I said, I told you I'm gonna live here now, motherfucker.
You know like that, You're like, you kid? What he said? Listen,

(36:38):
we're opening. You could stay her tired the next day.
You gotta be on it. Well. To make a long
story really short, I lived in there for three hundred
and twenty one days wow, And that was a really
robust time. I remember my brother asking me, like, why
would you do that? I said, First of all, I
have nowhere to live, tons of girls, gigantic bar. People
will bring me drugs. I'm sack, I said, and if

(37:00):
it works, would be good for my art resume, you know.
Three hundred and twenty one days later, that was the
end of my run. My brother came in and said,
you're ready to come home. And I've been gone for
a while, ten years with Peter Beerder. You're in the crowbar.
Both records never be broken. And I said, I am.
And then he drove me to rehab.

Speaker 3 (37:22):
Wow, that's right. Yeah, so let's talk about that. You're
how old are you now? When you go on a treatment?

Speaker 1 (37:29):
So I went in in two thousand and five and
twenty years ago. So I'm forty three years old. A
lot of people say, when did you live in the
crowbar when you were like twenty five? I was like
forty four. It's like we would do this. I used
to live in a mansion. I'm living in a nightclub.
You know. It's trippy living in a nightclub.

Speaker 3 (37:46):
And at that point in time, like what made you
tap out? What made you say I'm done?

Speaker 1 (37:52):
You know, I was on the last square of the chessboard.
Bro it was either jump off and killed myself or
do something else. I didn't know what anything else was.
By the way, you should be noted here. The only
reference I had to Rehab was I heard some people
went there. But we had a club in New York
called Rehab that my friends opened. So we'd love to
say it the night you want to go to Rehab totally,

(38:13):
we go to the club. I for whatever reason, I
was in the medical world. I know a lot about medicine, Alanda,
I just never heard of twelve step program. I never
really I saw a in a movie once. I just
dismissed it. It wasn't on my radar, you know, And so
I didn't know what was going to happen. I went
to rehab. I was just only the reference I had

(38:34):
was one flo over the Coopers, and I staid, figured
I'd wake up with a big scar and I was terrifying,
but I was so hollowed out, as I know now.
I was so ready, you know. And the next morning
we went into a room and these guys and you know,
weird slippers and robes, all sitting around a bunch of

(38:55):
banged up dudes between eighteen and eighty. And they sat
in the shirt and the guy said, my name is John,
a drug addicting alcoholic. And I were like, that's some
pretty breathtaking honesty, Like who would ever say that? And
then the guy said and the next guy said, it
came to me. I was like the fourteenth guy, and
I said, my name is Pete. I'm a drug ddict

(39:15):
and alcoholic. And that's when everything changed.

Speaker 3 (39:19):
Well, tell the audience about your first what was your
first thirty days?

Speaker 1 (39:22):
Like, well, I'll tell you my first day and that's
the only one that really matters. They put under my
door a piece of paper. It was written on top
and pencil said cocaine progression chart for Peter Tunney. I
looked at the chart. Goes down one side it says like,
did blow for the first time, bought your own coke
for the first time, stayed up all life for the

(39:44):
first time, watched the sunrise for the first time on coke,
missed work for the first time on coke. It goes
down the ladder. In the bottom is like a washing machine.
It's called the cycle. They called the washing machine. And
the other side you start coming up the axis. There's
a red ax that says you are here now a
sincere desire to get help. First of all, I did
not have a sincere desire to get help, and I

(40:05):
did not want to quit drinking, so I figured I
should already be exempted from this whole thing. So I
had that. We went into a room. There's a lot
of people in the room and you have one of
those little kids desks kind of curved around with the
desk is attached to the chair, and everybody had one
piece of paper on it. Because you didn't bring stuff
with you. You're not allowed, right, you know, on a
phone or a bag. You just in your pajamas and

(40:25):
you and I have this paper on my desk. I
just happened to look over the other guy's paper, said
cocaine progression chart for Joe. I looked at it. It looked
eerily similar to mine. And I was thinking the whole
time before I went in that room, these people have
really done their research. They must have contacted my brothers,

(40:49):
my childhood friend, Earl Deelers. This is what I'm thinking.
I'm not an idiot. I've been in the world. But
I figured that how would else they know all this stuff?
And then I looked on the other guy's paper and
it was like the same. And I got out of
my chair and I ran around the room. I realized
it's printed out of a fucking textbook. They just write
your name on top to make sure you get it

(41:10):
under your door, right, Holy shit, And that's when the
dime dropped for me. That was the moment for me
where I thought, Wow, that's that accurate, and that's in
a textbook, and everyone else is here and they have
the same thing. Maybe I am a drug addict. That's
so weird. Maybe I am because I thought I was

(41:32):
in the wrong place. As it turns out. You know,
you don't want to take any credit for anything, but
I was the worst guy in the place for you,
or I could have been the poster boy for this shit.
I had checked every bounce. I'll tell you one more
fun anecdote. So one day we're in there and the
subject is personality defects. I was offended already just the

(41:55):
thought that I might have one. So they ask you
to write down your personality defects. I'm telling you on
my mother's soul. I sat there, I couldn't think of
any I wrote down one, too generous. That's what I
wrote down on my paper, generous. And so they went
around the room. I got called on early and they're like, uh,
Peter T, what do you think. I could only think

(42:17):
of one? I'm too generous. And even the crackhead guys
that rehab all laughed at the same time, and that
mine always gets a laugh. That is really what I
thought at the time, Like people won't even believe that
I didn't know what was going on. Bro, I didn't
get it. I was following up. I never opened the
big book. At this point, they told me I had

(42:37):
to read the book. They gave you, like eight pages
you have to read. That night first day, pages went
in my room. I started reading. I got to the
bottom of the page, I had no idea what I read.
Tried to read it again, got to the bottom of page,
and no idea what I read. It was like having
fifty movies going on in my head at the same time, screaming.
I'd be trying to read something. I just I couldn't

(42:58):
read it racing, So I had races of races, thoughts,
and I went to the councilor and I said, listen,
I'm gonna have to check out here. You said you
have to read the book in order to get sober,
and I can't read anymore. I could read when I
was four years old. By the way, anything I was
really early on all that stuff I couldn't read. I
couldn't believe it is my brain cells, So dad, I

(43:20):
can't read a page. Well, my first time reading the
Big Book really was reading it in Brooks where you
passed the book around. And as it turns out, I
could read it just took me a while. But that's
that's That's an interesting one because I've shared that in
meetings many times. Adults come up to me and said
I couldn't read. Out either couldn't read, so you can't

(43:44):
hope for that. You could not You could have a
broken leg, anything could have happened, your friends could have
died in the car pass. We know all of these
things that happened, you know, and still you get over.

Speaker 2 (43:57):
What this is? What's the greatest thing recovery? You Peter?

Speaker 1 (44:08):
You know, my glib answer would be everything you could
have wiped my brain clean with a machine the first
day of rehab. And the only things I would have
learned in this world I would have learned from going
to meetings. I would be fine. I would be fine.
That set of information, those principles, that's all they needed.

(44:29):
You know, a lot of guys tell me, I don't
want to do this for the AA. It's like brainwashing.
And I always say your brain needs washing. Gets dirty, though,
we gotta washed that brain. But the greatest I don't know.
You know, I've learned so much at AA. I would say,
I've learned like almost everything from AA. And I was
a real drug addict, but I've been to AA the
whole time. I used to go to some NA meetings,

(44:50):
but I just however, I got my medicine. I got
it in AA. You know, I became grateful. I would say,
is the best gift that I got. And this old
guy said to me, you know, Peter Tunny, gratitude is
not what you say when you get what you want.

(45:11):
Gratitude is what you have left when you don't get
what you m never thought, never thought of it. I've
asked my brothers and sisters, people that have worked for
me for a long time, people that have known me
in and out. Do you ever recall me using the
word gratitude or grateful in my whole life? Nobody can.

(45:33):
I don't remember getting a present as a kid and
say I'm just so grateful to have these two loving parents.
And get to know, I said, why didn't I get
the other gift? How come he got the bigotory? Right?
Like every alcoholic, you're a victim of everything that happens to.
Someone loans your money and then the fucking guy wants
it back. I hate where that happens, every single trade.

(45:53):
You're a victim. And by the way, I never knew
any of this stuff when I was in it. Some
of this stuff I've just learned recently, you know, because
I hear someone else saying this, Wow, that's me. So
I got the gift of gratitude and my life is
based on gratitude today. That's probably the most overarching core
principle for me to remind myself of. And that one

(46:17):
of those guys with forty years has been texting me
every day.

Speaker 2 (46:21):
I love that.

Speaker 1 (46:22):
Since then, you want to hear one to hear one
on the drop one on me, brother, Trump, one on you.
This fucking guy he's got me, okay, writes me, good morning.
My grandmother used to say the fact that my family
was in America was proof that Saint Patrick had chased
the snakes out of Ireland. I'm grateful today that there's
a choice where there had not been a choice, That

(46:45):
there is willingness today where there was no willingness, that
there is gratitude today which displaced my ungratefulness and my depression.
Depression is the void created with ungratefulness. Exclamation point. I'm
grateful that I get to be loving today rather than
looking for someone to love me. I'm grateful today that
I get to live my life as myself rather than

(47:07):
what I think other people would want me to live as.
I'm grateful for the day, the challenges, the blessings, and
the abundance of head.

Speaker 2 (47:14):
This day, Oh beautiful, So good to stay on though.

Speaker 3 (47:19):
Yeah, yeah, let's let's talk about mister Gratitude himself. I
think his name's Keith. With the Innocence Project, he had
a big impact on you.

Speaker 1 (47:28):
I'm not going to name all their names. They might like,
they might not put out of nose. I'd just say, like,
I met this guy. He got out in like March.
I met him Aut at dinner in May. He went
when he was twenty. He came out when he was
fifty four years old for a crime he did not commit.
And I met him Aut at dinner one night. He said,
how you doing, Peter Tunney. I know you're work. You

(47:49):
think your mister Gratitude. He shook my hand with such
electricity it like literally shot up in my arm, and
he said, no, sure, that's me. I am mister Gratitude.
I'm the world of Gratitude. And I was just so
stunned because I even then, that's like ten years ago.
Even then, I'm thinking, if you did thirty four years

(48:13):
in prison, let alone thirty four days in prison for
a crime you didn't commit, you're gonna come out and
be furious and angry and ready to drive your car
through the window of the seven to eleven and everything else.
But he shook my arm with such intentions. I am
mister gratitude, he said, Keith, you gotta explain it to me.
You know, I probably overdosed one hundred times. I just
woke up. You know, I got a beautiful wife, I've

(48:35):
got two beautiful kids down, I'm an artist. I live
in this crazy world. I do what the fuck I want.
It's unbelievable. Like, I'm pretty goddamn gratefully. You know, I
should have been dead by the way, I was already dead.
I'm alive. So much should has happened to me. It's
hard for me to think that I would be in
a better situation after fifty years. So I'm pretty grateful.
He said, Well, you know you don't have, mister city slicker.

(48:56):
Did you have dozens of people, perfect strangers, loving on you,
hearing about you, trying to get you out of an
impossible hell hole, and they got me out. So I'm
pretty goddamn grateful. Wow, Wow, I mean so you know
for me, I'll tell you this, you know, first people

(49:16):
in recovery. Of course, just so grateful for all these
strangers loving on me, because that's how I got here.
And second is I have such a like if you
could look at my body like an X ray, about
eighty eight percent of my gratitude comes from it. His honeries.
That's just what happened to me, you know. And I've

(49:38):
stuck with these people, you know. I talk to people
every day. I'm in this space every day. I sat
down with this woman at a dinner. She said, next
to me. It was a fancy dinner. We're at Julian
Schnabel's studio, this big high level culture thing. She's sitting
next to me. It's a little, old, thinning, gray haired woman.

(49:59):
She said, I'm Sonny. What's your name. I said, I'm Peter.
She's old Peter. Tell me about yourself. And I told
her the great Peter Tunny story, just how great I
fucking em and what I'm doing and running this down.
And then uncharacteristically, I said, why didn't you tell me
about you? And she told me her story of spending

(50:19):
fifteen years on death row, etcetera, etcetera, and they executed
her husband while she was in prison. When she got out,
she got hit by a bus and broke every boat
at it. But she had a ten month old baby
when she went to jail, and like, just the most
unbelievable story I've ever heard in my life still is Sonny.
I bow on the author of Sonny Jacobs, and I

(50:41):
just said to her, We're going to stick together, Sonny,
And we're still together to this day. She's alive, and
we started the Sonny Center to take care of generating people.
But the plant of the story with Sonny is Sonny
is such a light. What the fu problem do you have? So,
you know, leaves in the pool again? Oh right? When

(51:03):
I sit around with those people and talk to exonerated
people that have prevailed this and not everyone that gets
out is in great shape. You know. Obviously it's a
rough road, but I know so many that are an
incredible shape and are so grateful. I'm not allowed to complain.
How can I complain? What am I going to say?

Speaker 2 (51:22):
You know?

Speaker 1 (51:23):
I walked to an AA meeting once and I had
a whole list of shit I wanted to say about,
like my wife and our relationship. I was ready to unload.
They didn't call me. They called him this other guy
that said his wife died of brain cancer last month
and now he has brain cancer and he's a little
freaked out by the whole thing and still having a
hard time with his wife. You know, my hand just

(51:44):
kind of went back down to my seat. I didn't
have anything to say. And so from spending time with
and loving and being loved by all these different ex hoarees,
it's beyond impressive. It's mind blowing. It's inexplicable. I didn't
think that. I didn't think that someone would do something
wrong to you. By the way, these are innocent people

(52:05):
that was done wrong to them, like planted ever in
suppression of evidence, stuff like that. If they would come out,
they're the most well adjusted, grounded, grounded in gratitude. She
is not changing. I guarantee you that she is the
leader of it. And Keith was the leader of it too.

(52:27):
There's I guarantee you they're still grateful today. They're not
complaining about how the burger was cooked. I guarant fucking
d you that shit.

Speaker 2 (52:34):
Mm hmm beautiful. Yeah, I love that. Let's buddy, let's
let's let's move over.

Speaker 3 (52:40):
Let's talk about Tony Goldman and the creation of Winwood
in your relationship with Windwood Walls in Miami.

Speaker 1 (52:50):
Another one. People think I'm a genius for I barely
did anything. I'll tell you what I have done. I'll
take credit for doing one thing. I have showed up.
I have showed up every fucking day for twenty years.
I have showed up. I did thirty years drugs and alcohol,
twenty years no drugs and uncle. So Tony Goldman, the
late great Tony Goldman, friend mentor, just a genius and

(53:14):
a visionary and what a guy. And Tony brought me
down here. I met with him and his son and
they said, uh, standing right outside building I'm sitting in
right now. And he told me his whole pitch. He said,
I got the town center figured out. Kit. It's going
to be called the Windwood Walks. This, by the way,
is word for word because it's easy to remember. And
I remember this shit. And he said, you should move

(53:37):
in this building. Kit. I need someone, said, Tony, you
got the dirt, you got the vision, you got the dough.
What do you need me for? He kind of hit
me in the chest. He said, I need someone to
be a beating heart, to bring energy and sunshine every day.
And when like that's your new job, kid, are you
with me? I said, Tony, I don't even really know
what you're talking about what do you mean? You know

(53:59):
we're in a blight. This is two thousand and nine,
so in Windwood that I mean people didn't live here.
It's like dead bodies met factory faulty man. I mean,
it's just it's not even like a bad neighborhood like
this particular is the place you are not going, you know,
just warehouse. And I said, you know, Tony, you think
rich people are going to come here and have dinner

(54:19):
one day and just as one of one hundred unbelievably
genius pressing and things he said. He said, kid, rich
people love a whiff of fear when they go out
to dinner.

Speaker 2 (54:32):
That's so good.

Speaker 1 (54:33):
I got like that. You know. He said, Miami's only Yang.
They need some Yang. It's all up for east Side.
You need the Lower east Side to balance it out.
We're gonna build the Lower east Side for man. And
I said, what am I going to do here?

Speaker 2 (54:45):
You know what?

Speaker 1 (54:46):
He said, You just move in there and do your thing. Kid,
help you. It's like, I don't know, Tony. And he
said something to the effect of like, do you trust me?
I said, because I'm a fucking crackhead. I thought he
was gifting me the building. I really thought that papers
came over. Papers came over, and I didn't see the

(55:07):
title transfer. It was a lease. I moved in here
for three thousand bucks a month and got six months
free rent. I was the only guy in tel Boro.
I mean, Joey had his restaurant there, so that was
our clubhouse. He was there before me. But I'm just
driving around like I am pink, deformed, old, smoking cigars,
no shirt on, driving my scooter around. I love this

(55:29):
place then. I've loved it every year since then. It's
something different now. New York is something different now than
when I first got there. You know. So I moved
in here. The first two people that ever came in
here when I opened. One guy tried to like rob me.
Another guy tried to sell me drugs, both unsuccessful. And
I remember the first year as I guard Basel, I

(55:51):
just kind of started around that time too, And I
guarantee you now one person ever drove over the bridge
to come to Miami from Miami Beat from our basle
to buy a piece of bar. That never happened. It
happened to me. The second year, a couple of people
came in. They would be like you. You like Tonny,
we're in town. Where is this Windword place? You know,
it's like, come over here. Then you would always call

(56:11):
me and say can I park my car here? I
would say, don't leave anything in your car, that's for
sure nothing. He said, well, my briefcase is empty. I said,
they don't know. They will break your window. You have
your window broken here in five minutes when we first
moved in. And so that's how it started. And now
after about four or five years, Tony bought the next
property we did, the wind with doors. When Tony passed away,

(56:33):
his daughter bought the next property in this whole complex,
at the Windwood Walls. And I become the Wizard of
wind Wood for some reason, just because I've been here
the whole time. But important to say, like the Wizard
and the Wizard of Oz, we must remember he was
the snake oil salesman who had his cart tipped over
on the side of the road, right, And he really
wasn't a wizard at all. He's a grifter and he

(56:55):
was grifting Dorothy right, because then when she got the
room and killed it, she said, listen, now you got
to take care of my friends. He's like listen. I'm
so sorry. I'm not a wizard at all. You know
she's but you have to. So he gave them a
plastic heart to the fake diploma, right, but they were
so happy. I literally have plastic replicas of one of
my billboards in New York that says courage. So I

(57:17):
am literally the wizard handing out plastic courage to people,
and like it, like in the movie, the people feel
better and that's all that fucking matters. And that's where
I really live. You know, I've seen We've probably had
thirty million people or something come through the wingwood walls.
I've probably shaken hand with a million people, you know,

(57:38):
and I've got you know, people love it. They come in,
they meet the Wizard, they leave, they feel hopeful. I
set something up that you would think is impossible. It's
really not a narcissistic shrine to myself or anything like that.
I'm trying to make you believe that impossible is often possible.

(58:00):
That's what I want you to think. How can this
fucking be? How look at I've had the same show
in a cinderblock, windowless room for fifteen fucking years, saying
the same stick. I've changed the other show thirty times.
I'm just before this. I had my same show in
another space for ten years. I've been doing the same

(58:22):
thing in my I've had a place open to the
public for like thirty years, except the forty five days
I was in rehab.

Speaker 3 (58:29):
Peter, Let's talk about your art. Let's talk about the messaging.
Let's talk about the hope, Let's talk about change. You
get some really interesting things that seem obvious that aren't obvious.

Speaker 2 (58:39):
Let's talk about your messaging.

Speaker 1 (58:41):
You know, when I think about my run, I'm just
going to dial it back for a second. I thought,
for a long time, not a long time, but for
a while after I came into the program that I
became a drug addict. When I was in the hospital,
You're getting increase injections of demol and you're checking your

(59:02):
watch by that shit, I can tell you because I
couldn't move right, I can't do anything for myself for
a long time, like five six months. Does it seemed
like a lot? It's a lot when you're a hyperactive kid.
I was just like this the whole time, that if
maybe I could get my demo rolls shot five minutes earlier,
And I thought if I grabbed the nurse by the

(59:23):
neck and choked her out to death, I would get
my hit sooner. I would probably have choked her out.
You're at a really desperate place, and you're in really
extreme pain. You know, my femur came out of my body.
You know, I'm like crazy about the pain inside my body.
By the way, I got it by a car fifty
years ago. My leg is still hurting me today. I've

(59:44):
lived in pain. So you're on these increased injections of demro.
One day they come in and tell you, no more demro.
You're gonna get morphine. Now. You're like, are you fucking
kidding me? There's no way I'm not doing that. Morphin
was like tile it all for me at that time time,
you know. And then they tell you now you're not
going to have morphine. Now you're going to have a tablet.

(01:00:06):
I don't want to pill. I want a shot. You know,
I'm living in there. I can smell that shit today,
just like a good appa you. And so I thought, well, wow, listen,
I could tell you this. If I gave you demroll
every four hours for five months, you two would be
addicted to demro. That is a fuck, by the way,
you'd be addicted in a week forget five months, right,
So I always thought wow. And then I went to

(01:00:27):
meetings and I heard a guys say, for example, when
I was like seven or eight years old, my parents
left the house, I'd wait for them to get to
the end of the driveway and make the turn. I
locked the front door, and I went into the liquor cabin. Said,
I didn't even know what liquor was. I never saw
people drunk. I just wanted to go in there. Of course,
Like holy shit, I did that. I wasn't to kid

(01:00:50):
the cride when my parents left, I went writing the
liquor cab. And I've heard like thirty things like that.
So I'm of the belief that I just came out
this way. I'm just sitting duck for a drink. Bro
just a sitting duck for a drink. Car accident or
no car accident, you know. And so I I was
arguing with my first sponsor, one of the greatest guys ever,

(01:01:12):
Missed Wright was his name. Very annoying, he always was,
And I was bringing this up to him. Is it genetic?
How did we get it? You know? All this kind
of stuff. By the way, I never knew that addiction
was a disease or anything like that, or any mental
health season. And he said, Peter, if your house was
on fire and your family was in there and you

(01:01:33):
could save them, would you stand outside with the fire
Marshal be talking like do you think it was the
coffee pot or the wiry?

Speaker 2 (01:01:42):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:01:42):
He said, your house is on fire, You've got to
go in and say day for yourself. And so that's
where I ended on it. I don't really care if
it's genetic or whatever. I could tell you one thing
for sure, it's within me and every module of my body.
I'm the poster boy for this shit, and I was
reminded of by those two great guys, Joe and Patrick.

(01:02:05):
The first thing he said to me is I just
want to remind you of something fatal and progressive. Sometimes
I get that fatal and progressive. It's if I almost
cry just telling you that, you know, there's no graduation
from this shit, And that's not the bad news. That's
the good news, bro. The bad news is you've been
on the ground for twenty years. You broke everybody's heart.

(01:02:27):
So it's fatal and progressive and so like my disease
is coming for me. Now. I didn't get over anything.
I've let my guard down. I'm drifting. First thing I'm
going to do is my head is going to be
poor me, poor me. And I was there. You know,
I knew I was in a rough spot. I said

(01:02:48):
to them on the phone that day. You know I've
been fantasizing about being on death row. That's how I
know I must be fucked up, because I was thinking
I could get a lot of reading in and will
visit me. It will be perfect for me. He said, Yes, Peter,
that's how you know you've fucked up, that your disease
have taken control of your mind even though you're not drinking.

Speaker 2 (01:03:10):
Hm m hm.

Speaker 3 (01:03:14):
That's it's heavy, it's beautiful, it's important, it's true. And
we just got to remember that every fucking day.

Speaker 1 (01:03:22):
Fatal progressive. I got reminded of the fatal progressive. That's right,
it's coming. He doesn't. It's patient patient yea seventy five
when you finally became a grandfather, to get you to
drink at that Christ, I've seen all that shit.

Speaker 2 (01:03:37):
Yeah, me too, me too.

Speaker 3 (01:03:39):
Better men than me are are what we call they
end up in the Witness Protection Program.

Speaker 1 (01:03:43):
I would have I would have voted me least likely
to ever have a month sober. When I was in
rehib I was paying the janitor to get me blown,
for example, and he never did. He told me one night,
I buried it out by the fence post like an idiot.
I went out there at night with a flashlight, escaped

(01:04:03):
from my barracks, you know. But it's got a fence
around the property that's like nine miles, so there's ten
thousand white. I started digging by the first one. Then
I realized she must be fucking with me. Anyways, He said,
that tells me next day you find that shit out there.
I was like, no, So I didn't even want to.
I wanted to get everyone over my back and go
back to my life.

Speaker 3 (01:04:23):
So let's close with this, buddy, you know, I always
in with got a lot of folks listen, all around
the world. They're struggling. Some of them might be thinking
about taking their lives. Some of them might be getting
ready to go.

Speaker 2 (01:04:35):
Back to jail. A lot of things. As you can imagine.

Speaker 3 (01:04:39):
Some of them just can't get sober, no matter if
someone's wife just left them. Some are just cheating, some
kind of betrayal. What's your message for everybody?

Speaker 2 (01:04:46):
Right now?

Speaker 1 (01:04:49):
You know the message is don't take the bait. My
optionality for at least ten years was should I call
my feeler, I called the dealer or killed my that
was my optionality. I'm glad to quote the fuel and
there's a choke in the air. How to hang out

(01:05:12):
with people that have them? I've seen people make it
through everything, everything you've meant. I've got happy kids around
me that have went through worst ship that I could
ever dream and so that gives you inspiration. You have
to listen to them.

Speaker 2 (01:05:32):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (01:05:32):
You know if you listen to the cracket.

Speaker 3 (01:05:36):
Right right, right, all right, buddy, listen. Thank you for
making time to all the listeners. Uh, if you're a wind,
would stop by and give the wizard a hug and
say you're from the Sino Show and say let him
know how much we appreciate his messaging tonight.

Speaker 2 (01:05:53):
I love you man, Thank you, brother.

Speaker 1 (01:05:55):
I love you too. So you know I love this time.
By the way, this time was for me. Yeah, this
is like my therapy and buddy, you know, and I
find that that's everything to get. If I'm in service,
I'm cool. If I'm on the pity part, I'm onne cool,
and so stay in service, helps buddy do something.

Speaker 3 (01:06:18):
Don't pick up amen, go make some fucking beautiful our
brother day later, man all right. The Sales Show is
a production of iHeart Podcasts, hosted by me Cina McFarlane,
produced by pod People in twenty eighth av Our lead
producer is Keith Carlick. Our executive proucer is Lindsay Hoffman.
Marketing lead is Ashley Weaver. Thank you so much for listening.

(01:06:41):
We'll see you next week.