July 23, 2024 • 26 mins
Watch Carol and Tim LIVE every day on YouTube: http://bit.ly/3vTiACF.
Bloomberg News Tech Reporter Natalie Lung explains how a dip in profits and a shift to longer rentals have Airbnb property managers looking for ways around the ubiquitous rental marketplace. Nick Corasaniti, Political Correspondent for the New York Times, discusses his book I Don't Want to Go Home: The Oral History of the Stone Pony.
Hosts: Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec. Producer: Paul Brennan.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim
Stenebek on Bloomberg Radio about fifteen years ago. Yes, Airbnb,
over the last fifteen years, it's really established this new
market for short term real estate rentals. It made it
easier for property owners to take on renters by helping
travelers find alternatives to hotels. It also handled some of
(00:28):
the transaction details. Don't forget about the cleaning fee. It
was a boon for many property owners who suddenly had
a new source of income to help pay off their mortgages.
They could fund renovations and Carol, Airbnb added more than
a million active listings just last year while also posting
record profit. It's doubled or more than doubled. It's market
valued a ninety seven billion dollars since twenty twenty when
(00:48):
it went public.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Listen, We've all stayed in Airbnb's I've stayed in multiple ones.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
I know people who have been hosts. I mean, you
can throw Verbo into this too, and Verbo right.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
It just feels like this induree has exploded, but it is.
It turns out Tim getting harder to be an airbnb host,
especially in the United States. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Natalie Lung is Bloomberg News tech reporter and for Bloomberg BusinessWeek,
she writes about how property managers are looking for ways
around Airbnb. She joins us here in the Bloomberg Interactive
Brokers studio, Natalie, why is it getting harder to be
an Airbnb host in the US?
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Yeah, So, there are a lot of factors over the
past fifteen years, maybe most recently the pandemic. The pandemic
has caused a lot of people in the US to
travel domestically during that time, and people rented like rural
cabin houses, larger vacation homes, and that cause a lot
of hosts to poler into the market and set up
homes there. And now coming out of the pandemic, people
(01:43):
returning to cities going overseas again, and so some markets
are becoming saturated. So that's one thing where.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
I mean, you know, yeah, who could have seen this
coming when everybody was quitting their jobs to become airbnb hosts.
Everybody get those low interest rate more btgages because they
had x number of airbnb rentals that everybody was going
to because they couldn't travel internationally.
Speaker 4 (02:06):
Exactly exactly. I mean, I'm sorry to state the obvious.
All right, So where are we and what does that
mean for Airbnb?
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Yeah? And so I went to this conference in April
where there are like six hundred people talking about what
to do.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
And this was not an Airbnb organized what type of
conference was?
Speaker 1 (02:22):
It was organized by an online influencer who has himself
done some of these mid term rentals as they call it,
like thirty plus days rentals, where they market they find
people who are relocating for a job temporarily and they
live months to months.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
The organization finds the person or the person finds so.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
It's the host, an individual mom and pop person like
someone with nine to five who's just trying to call
up your local you know, hospitals. This guy, this online
influence of Jesse for Quz, just found an opportunity there
contenting the HR department of his local hospital in Modesto
in California and say, do you have travel nurses who
(03:05):
be coming to my city all the time and do
they need houses? And he's telling them, I have like
five properties available and you can house them all there.
And that's how he got things rolling. And now he's
telling marketing this strategy to six hundred people.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
It's super smart.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
It is really smart. It does, though smart raise the
question that, you know, the whole idea of a marketplace
like Airbnb taking that you know, what analysts and investors
call the take rate is because they have this platform
that they argue is safe because it has these reviews,
It has a way that you know, you can get
insurance if something doesn't work out, It has a history
(03:44):
of who has stayed there, how they've raided it. And
then there's a way that you can I don't want
to say arbitration because that's like a legal term, but
there's a way that you can use the platform to
resolve differences between the host and the person because let's
face it, this stuff doesn't always go smoothly, so how
do people do those things?
Speaker 1 (04:04):
So part of this strategy, there is a risk to it,
and maybe the startup cause is higher. You need to
vet the person who's staying at your home much longer,
but the payoff is that you won't have to do
that often because they're staying on a monthly basis. And
so yeah, a lot of these people vet people very
carefully and at least for some who are catering to
(04:24):
relocating employees. They have the employer as like a safeguard.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Carrolly, you got to make sure that they're not going
to rent it for thirty days and then put it
on Airbnb.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
Could you magic?
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Like the most read story, one of the most red
stories in the last hour, the so called Wolf of Airbnb,
who we talked about a little earlier.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
Who did things that weren't really on the up and up.
Does the Airbnb like this change?
Speaker 1 (04:46):
So Cheskey Brian Chesky has addressed some of this book
direct Movement in twenty one and he said, it's not
like a big number that's happening. A lot of these
people are still individuals who rely on Airbn because they
have just probably one rental. But obviously with the three
hundred thousand listings on, like a particular there's a platform
(05:07):
called Furnished Finder who has gained a lot of traction
out in New York City put down their Airbnb regulations
and people are scramping to find another platform. And so
there's we see this momentum going on, and to the host,
it's like just diversifying their marketing channels in a.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Way, because they'll they'll stay on Airbnb. But also they'll
have this as an option. Yes, oh okay, So how
much are they able to save or how much more
are they able to make by not giving that take
rate to Airbnb?
Speaker 1 (05:35):
It depends on your scale. So this online influencer slash organizer,
for example, he's now making at K a month in profit.
He manages seventeen seventeen rentals.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Does that not include does he sell the course to yes? Okay,
so that's what I was waking.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Yeah, so the course makes a million a year. It's
sixty five hundred dollars. And he attracted like thirty sixty
more sign ups after the conference in Aro, and there
was an attendee whose credit card card decline as well
because there's a lot of money.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Well, how you know, I am curious, like how you're
thinking about kind of how I mean you said it's
a small part of Airbnb's business.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
Is that correct?
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Yes? Yes? And like not everyone does this, Like not
everyone has the time to vet everyone so carefully. And
for a lot of mom and pop hosts who just
want to feel like a weekend or to supplement their income,
airbnbuld it's still a choice for them.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
I just remember somebody in our neighborhood who had some
properties and you know, would rend them out Airbnb, but
then was also then looking to be like rented at
to corporate people because they felt like.
Speaker 4 (06:45):
Pays more.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
It was just a whole different vibe and I almost
feel like this is taking that to the like next level.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Yeah, so some one host I talked to, she compliments
both strategies or short term and long term. So maybe
there's a week where you can't find someone to fill it,
they will try to still go on Airbnb. She takes
like fifty percent of her booking still on Airbnb, and
but on the side she has this property management business
(07:11):
herself as well. So people are getting creative.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
It's a really fascinating way to do this. We've been
spending time talking about Airbnb, but you also Rais at
the beginning of your story, you talk about verbo, and
that's yeah, vacation rental by owner is what it stands for,
but verbo is the way we say it is verbal
having the same challenge too.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
So they are a bit different in the sense that
they have not ever allowed like rooms to be listed.
They just do whole home rentals.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Yeah, that's how they try to differentiate themselves in their
advertising market.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, So like I guess for a lot
of hosts who operate on there, there are a lot
of people who list on Airbnb verbal and their own website,
So it depends what your property is. But for Airbnb's
a lot of like people would think of that as
their first avenue and sort of that's why we're seeing
(08:06):
this sort of diversification here.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
Is this expected to grab.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Yeah, I mean that we're talking to the influencer, like
he's seeing more students and there are other enterprise software companies,
we're seeing people making their own websites. So like from
that we can see itself that influence still going on.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
So Chesske has talked about this for years, as you mentioned,
But is this something that after doing this reporting and
seeing this growing movement Airbnb investors should be concerned about
it should be on their radar in a.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Way that we can see the company is actually doing
more to try to support hosts. They have made changes
to how let's say, helping host price their property as
well and also trying to weed out some of the
lower quality listings, as they say, so making a better
experience for everyone. So keep everyone on the potell.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Check out the story. It's in BusinessWeek, available on the
terminal and at bloomberg dot com. Natalie Long, Bloomberg News
tech reporter, joining us here in the studio. It's the
boss who doesn't like a little thunder Road, who doesn't.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
Like a little Bruce Bruce Springsteen.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Excuse me, well, the Stone Pony. Yes, you hear those
three words, And if you're like me and many others,
you think of.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
One man, Bruce Springsteen.
Speaker 4 (09:28):
Yeah, and it make no mistake of me, Jersey Girl,
I can say, you.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Can say that the Boss certainly is a huge part
of the Stone Pony. But as our next guest writes
in a new book it was just out last month,
it's not just a place for Springsteen and his fans, Carol.
It's a place that has become a quote international rock
pilgrimage for all types of musicians. And despite the fact
that once renowned venues like CBGB and the Cavern Club,
which is where the Beatles started, those are gone, the
(09:53):
Stone Pony, where Bruce got his start, it's still here.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Nick Corsinidi is a political correspondent for The New York Times.
He's the author of a new book, I don't want
to go home, The Oral History of the Stone Pony.
And he joins us here in a Bloomberg Interactive broker's studio,
so someone who knows all about it.
Speaker 5 (10:09):
Welcome, welcome, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 4 (10:12):
Since you do cover well politics.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Oh yeah, that's where we're going.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
We need to kind of start there if you don't mind, sure,
How are you thinking about this environment? How do you
think about democracy right now? Considering the developments of the
past weekend.
Speaker 5 (10:27):
Well, it's interesting how that's actually word that's being thrown
around a lot, especially from the right. You know, President Trump,
Trump's campaign speaker Johnson, Senator McConnell, they all had like
statements within an hour of Biden's letter being posted saying
that this is undemocratic or disenfranchising the fourteen million voters
(10:48):
who cast primary ballots for Biden, and they cast it
for Biden, not for Biden Harris, and that you know,
this was an anti democratic move. Now it's a bit
of a difficult message for them to carry, just given
everything that happened in January sixth, and you know a
lot of voting laws that have been passed by Republican
legislatures but it's certainly something that's starting to catch on
(11:09):
with the voters. You know, there was a poll in
the Washington Post about six weeks ago about the issue
of democracy and you know how important it was to voters,
and it was more than sixty percent said it was
extremely important. Now, the only thing that came close to
that was the economy. So this is vitally important to voters,
right yet they actually said in these six swing states
that they trusted Trump a little bit more than Biden
(11:29):
to handle those issues. So it's you know, it's something
that's been defining four our politics for the last four years.
You know, President Biden made his last major address before
the midterms on issues of democracy, and then Democrats did
very well in the midterms. So it's something that's very
much of the forefront of the conversation. Is everything's happening
with Vice President Harris, Democrats coalescing and all that.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
But was there was there an alternative to this sort
of coronation that we saw over the last twenty four hours,
because there are around one hundred days left, Like I
was there an alternative apart from you know, so many
I don't want to call them kingmakers, but truly, you
had people in the last twenty four hours on the
Democratic side coming out and not everybody and endorsing Kamala
(12:12):
Harris in a way that makes it so she is
the nominee without actually having appeared in a primary.
Speaker 5 (12:18):
The practical nature of where we are in the cycle
right now makes it really hard for anyone other than
Vice President Harris to kind of step up, because what
the Biden campaign has is staff, infrastructure, field offices, ninety
million in the bank, a fundraising apparatus that you know,
she says that she's raised eighty six million, I think,
which is a staggering number since the announcement twenty four
(12:41):
hours ago. No one else could do that. Like, if
someone who's extremely popular, thought of as a next generation
Democrat like Gretchen Whitmer, Gvin Newsom, Josh Shapiro, they'd all
be starting from scratch. Sure they might be able to
inherit some of the apparatus, but it'd be really, really hard.
And that's just we're talking about the practicality, right the
politics of trying to leap frog the first black woman
(13:03):
vice president and who's also going to now be the
first possible, you know, standard bearer for the Democratic Party
to try and take that away in the modern coalition
would just be really politically challenging.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
Do people know what democracy means?
Speaker 5 (13:18):
I think that's a really interesting question that that Washington
Post poll explores. It's become so polarized and politicized that
people ascribe democracy to different issues that aren't necessarily just
about voting, just about trying to overturn an election, trust,
an election, break into election machines, everything that you know,
when I write about it, that's my focus. But you
(13:38):
see people thinking about democracy just as like, well, if
the other side wins, it's a mortal threat to the
future of the country. Whether you're a Republican a Democrat.
It's kind of been going in this polarized way, and
so I think that the issue has certainly been politicized
and polarized and muddied in a way.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
But at the same time, I mean, it's simple and pure, right,
it's a government of all of us exactly.
Speaker 5 (14:01):
Well, there is even another debate where you hear, especially
on the right, more we're republic and at a democracy,
which you know would take the rest of this program
to quote the unpack, but it's definitely something that I
think is being effectively muddied. But again, when you have
a Democrat, say, who goes back to the original messeging
of this from a post January sixth, spring of twenty one,
(14:23):
with all the voting laws, like foreign president, I mean,
current president Biden really did a good job of that
in the fall of twenty two before the midterms, and
it did break through. So you wonder if there is
going to be a refocus on that. I mean, we're
already seeing January six ads again hitting the airwaves, right,
So I think this is going to be at the forefront.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
You cover voting rights and democracy, and we're gonna get
to the stone pony in a bit. We got a
great we got a great chunk of time with you,
So we got plenty of time. Do you think we'll
Is it fair to say that voting has changed just
in the two years since the mid terms or in
the four years since the twenty twenty election, like have
the rules in certain state's changed?
Speaker 5 (15:01):
Oh significantly, And there's often easier to vote. It depends
on where you are, and it depends on who you are.
There's been, you know, efforts to limit mail voting especially,
and so if you're in a state where they change
the mail voting rules and you were once a mail voter,
there's some things that you now have to be aware of.
There's efforts to say, like, let's say in Wisconsin, there's
(15:22):
been this whiplash about using dropboxes, which is where you
can bring an Asda bow drop it off just like
a mailbox. A lot of voters love that because you're
not bound by you know, whether a voting office is
open or not. Let's say you can't go during work
hours you're a shift worker. You could only go AT's
say six am or eight pm, you drop off your ballot.
It's it's easier for the midterms. The Wisconsin Supreme Court
(15:44):
said no, you can't do that, so all those voters
couldn't do that anymore. And then the newly constituted Wisconsin
Supreme Court, which now leans democratic even though they're nonpartisan.
It was once conservative. Now they're putting them back right,
so maybe voters can go use that. So that's just
one example of like the shifts. And there's also the
shift in the just the wholesale voting behaviors that has
(16:05):
really kind of defined everything since the pandemic. You know,
voting by mail used to kind of be a Republican advantage, Yeah,
Florida and Georgia. Like in Georgia where it's become such
a flashpoint where Republicans are limiting it. You know, it
was the Republican governor who brought.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
It to Georgia.
Speaker 5 (16:20):
George W. Bush and Carl Rover were absolute masters of
the vote by mail and using the mail. You know,
there's a whole book written about it by a Sasa Eisenberg.
So it's interesting to see the patterns behave the politics change,
and then yeah, there's a lot of laws that have
been changed.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
All right, speaking of a book, how does someone who
covers voting rights and democracy at the New York Times.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Man, you need a break after doing that, and you
got to write about something completely different, write.
Speaker 4 (16:43):
A book about the Stone Pony.
Speaker 5 (16:45):
So I in between the sixteen and twenty elections, I
was the New Jersey correspondent, of which I'm from loud
and proud New Jersey in amen and I grew up
going to the Stone Pony. And I grew up, you know,
going to Asbury Park to see punk music. And when
I was going in the nineties, in the early two thousands,
(17:06):
Asbury was very different. To put it lightly, it was
kind of dangerous. It was a ghost town. It was
very rough. You know, there was abandoned buildings everywhere. There
was this structure that was like an abandoned skeleton of
like an apartment complex that had been failed multiple times.
It just like you couldn't believe it that on the
Jersey Shore, you know, this finite like Gold Coast, on
the East Coast, that this one town could just be
(17:28):
so desolate. And that was my experience. But punk, we
don't care, and that was our stage. So we went.
And then due to covering politics and moving to DC
and going to college away from New Jersey, I hadn't
seen Asbury for a while until I came back in
twenty seventeen, and I was like, what happened? And so
(17:49):
a long time. It's a long time. It was like
from about like two thousand and six, probably two thousand
and five to twenty seventeen, and a lot changed, and I, like,
you know, as the Jersey course, and I was still
a political reporter, so I still had to cover you know,
the new Governor Murphy Corey Booker's eventual presidential campaign. That
was still like my main assignment, but I could still
cover some of the culture. And I wanted to tell
(18:11):
this story about this town that bounce back because, especially
having covered the twenty sixteen campaign, we learned about for
every Asbury, there's one hundred failed small towns, right, And
I wanted to tell that story that got at the
spirit of what Asbury is. And it's a music town,
and so I didn't want to just be like, it's
got a hotel and you know, some new restaurants and investors,
and well, that's all important, and you have to tell that.
(18:32):
That wasn't the spirit That felt important to me, to
tell why this town's renaissance is important. And so I
was like, Hey, this Stone Pony's still there somehow magically
in like open defiance of the expected lifespan of a
rock club. Let me use that as my narrative trojan
Horse to tell the story of Asby Park.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
I want to get right back to Nick korsindi political
correspondent for The New York Times, also the author of
the new book I Don't Want to Go Home, The
Oral History of the Stone Pony, Nick the Boss Bruce Springsteen.
He writes an introduction You got him for the intro.
But it's not just Bruce Springsteen who you spoke to
(19:10):
for this book, Steve van zandt Lofgren. Uh, the Jonas brothers,
all three are there more than three Jonas brothers. The
Jonas Brothers are.
Speaker 5 (19:20):
Three in the band.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
There's just three, okay, in the band, there's three Jack Johnson.
It's an incredible lineup, John Popper, Russell Crowe as well
Patti Smith. Uh, talk to me and talk to us
about how you were able to get all these incredible
people to speak to you for this Well.
Speaker 5 (19:39):
I mean from the political world, you're kind of used
to just slowly pulling threads to get more people to
talk to you. You know, one leads to another. Hey
do you know this person? Can you help introduce me
to this.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
We've got Chris Christie and that would make sense because
you're a political report.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
I did Chris Christie.
Speaker 5 (19:55):
That was actually while he was campaigning for president. We
did we did a video interview. Yeah, we just we
did a video interview and that was like my New
York Times thing, and then we shifted to lunch where
we talked about the pony. And then I went to
his event later and wrote a story off that which
interview was longer the Pony one. He's a big fan, clearly,
(20:16):
but it's you know it. I also think what was
interesting to me was how many people were willing to talk.
And I think it just speaks to this the weird
you know draw and allure that the Stone Pony has
for so many artists, in part because of the spirit
that like Springsteen, south Side and Stevie kind of like
imbued in the place. So Tom Morello calls him the
good ghosts that are in the Pony, and I think
(20:38):
so many artists feel that, and it really is kind
of like it works for so many different genres, right
Like Patti Smith felt that and she felt such a
connection to the club because it felt like one of
those clubs that helped her establish herself in New York,
the same way that like Mike McCready felt. The guitarist
and Pearl Jam felt an amazing connection there because it
(20:58):
reminded him of his origins when like crowds were on
top of you and you know, you could see everyone
in the in the crowd so clear that you could
read their beer labels, and what that felt like as
a musician, and so you know when people there's there's
a common phrase that like, you play small rock clubs
when you're on your way up and when you're on
your way down. But I think the Pony kind of
cuts across that a little bit because it creates that
(21:18):
bond with a lot of artists that they want to
get something back that they've you know, lost as they've
moved up, and they still play it. Russell Crow's a
great example. He he was playing with this band thirty
out for gruntsy he had for forever, and he booked
a tour right before Gladiator comes out when he's you know,
sexiest man in the world, one of the most A
List celebrities of all A list celebrities, and he had
(21:41):
booked Madison Square Garden Theater, not the full garden but
still like a six thousand person venue, and then the
Pony it's about six hundred and so once he's a megastar,
they were like, well, you got to cancel the Pony
because you're in the radius now, and he was like, no,
I'm going to cancel the Garden. I don't need that.
I want to do I want to do the Stone
Poney and like that. Just and he has an interesting
(22:01):
story in the book how he was actually going to
play in New York on September tenth, two thousand and one.
So playing at the Pony actually might have because he
was staying at a hotel right next to the Towers,
might have, you know, saved his life. But just the
fact that he gave up five thousand, five hundred fans
to play at the Pony and what that would feel like,
I think speaks to how so many people feel about
(22:23):
the pot.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Are you not entertained? I'm sorry I had.
Speaker 4 (22:27):
I mean, how did it come to be?
Speaker 5 (22:28):
Though?
Speaker 4 (22:29):
Like I think we just take it, not take it
for granted, just assume it just came to be. I
don't know, we assume it was Bruce Brings. How did
it come to be?
Speaker 5 (22:37):
Well, it opened in you know, kind of a desperate
time Fraspberry Park. It had experienced pretty traumatic race riots
a few years beforehand, and that caused some pretty big flight.
But what that also did is, as Stevie van Zandt
says so lyrically in the book, it left it to
us rockers, rogues, mystics and renegades. And I just I
can like we'll always hear him saying that, Yeah, in
(22:57):
my head and he just says it so effortlessly because
he's just such a lyrical person. And that created the
scene of musicians that you know, you wouldn't expect to
find on the Jersey Show. You find it in Motown,
in Nashville and New Orleans, but then for some reason,
you had it in Asbury Park. And once Springsteen starts
taking off, people start paying attention to it, and then
(23:18):
Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes start and they kind
of really helped create this sound of music. It's rock
and roll with horns and gospel and soul and R
and B, and it was a sound you hadn't heard elsewhere,
and it was dancy and people wanted to dance to
rock music again, right Like the whole guitar slinger thing.
It kind of made people watch music. You were dancing
(23:38):
again and people love that, and Bruce loved that, so
he starts coming. People start learning about it. There's a
famous broadcast of a south Side Johnny show in seventy
six on eleven radio stations across the country, and that
wasn't done that much. So now there's a scene and
a sound, and everyone wants to start coming. And then
when Bruce becomes really famous, it also becomes his home.
(23:59):
And you know in the book, the things of celebrity
that would bring you to New York in LA and
all the things that normal people do didn't interest me.
What interested me was where I was from. These people
mattered to me, and this place was interesting to me
and sustaining that scene. And so when you have a guy,
I mean, imagine right now, like if Taylor Swift picked
a six hundred person club and just showed up there
on Tuesdays, people be camping out right like you wouldn't
(24:20):
even a within ten block radius. He was that famous
after born, born in the USA, so that he was
still doing it created this spontaneity that lives on there
and it's it's maybe Brute will show up, but also
it's maybe like I'm seeing, you know, a metal band
and maybe Zach Wilde shows up, and or you know,
I'm seeing a punk band and maybe I'm seeing Taking
(24:42):
Back Sunday and the guys from Brand New come out,
or I'm seeing you know, Midtown and Brian fallon. Because
it it's the spirit of the place and like the
truest sense of the word, and it really I think
has just stuck in a way that like you can't
take it out, and that's what keeps artists from coming back.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
You writ in the book about the transfer of Asbury,
and I'm wondering if the Stone Pony will live on
into the future because it has changed the area around
it has changed so much.
Speaker 5 (25:10):
It's a great question. I think everyone in Asbury recognizes
that the Stone Pony is the kind of spiritual, beating
heart and soul of Asbury, and so as the towns
come back in a kind of very organic way. They've
done a great job at preserving that. There's new condos,
you know, the six million dollar condo, there's new development.
(25:32):
It's a money town right now. They're building condos everywhere.
But I think they understand that you can't touch the Pony.
You have to leave it there, and you kind of
have to leave the summer stage there too, because it's
become such a part of town and like, you know,
it's like this mini festival feel every night, and the
sounds echo across the boardwalk, so like even if you
don't have a ticket to say it was just at
(25:53):
the bouncing Souls of the Pony on Saturday. And if
you have a ticket. You were three blocks away on
the boardwalk. You could hear, you know, them playing hopeful romantic,
and so.
Speaker 4 (26:01):
That's pretty cool.
Speaker 5 (26:02):
You can't, you just can't remove that. If you do,
it's not Asbury anymore, right, it's just another wealthy beach town.
Speaker 4 (26:08):
Two bouncers did this right exactly.
Speaker 5 (26:10):
It started by two bouncers who were just like, I
want to do my own thing, and they did. And
you know, it's had us ups and downs. It's closed twice,
and it's certainly not a bouncer run bar anymore. It's
backed by major industry support, including Live Nation, but you
know it persists.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
I mean, listen, everybody talks about Asbury Park. I feel
like it's just something so much more. Nick, thank you
so much, really appreciate it did courus Aniti. He has
a new book out. He's, of course, political correspondent for
the New York Times. The book I Don't Want to
Go Home, The Oral History of the Stone Pony. This
is really fine, Thank you so much, good luck.
Speaker 4 (26:41):
This is bluebir
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim
Stenebek on Bloomberg Radio about fifteen years ago. Yes, Airbnb,
over the last fifteen years, it's really established this new
market for short term real estate rentals. It made it
easier for property owners to take on renters by helping
travelers find alternatives to hotels. It also handled some of
(00:28):
the transaction details. Don't forget about the cleaning fee. It
was a boon for many property owners who suddenly had
a new source of income to help pay off their mortgages.
They could fund renovations and Carol, Airbnb added more than
a million active listings just last year while also posting
record profit. It's doubled or more than doubled. It's market
valued a ninety seven billion dollars since twenty twenty when
(00:48):
it went public.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Listen, We've all stayed in Airbnb's I've stayed in multiple ones.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
I know people who have been hosts. I mean, you
can throw Verbo into this too, and Verbo right.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
It just feels like this induree has exploded, but it is.
It turns out Tim getting harder to be an airbnb host,
especially in the United States. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Natalie Lung is Bloomberg News tech reporter and for Bloomberg BusinessWeek,
she writes about how property managers are looking for ways
around Airbnb. She joins us here in the Bloomberg Interactive
Brokers studio, Natalie, why is it getting harder to be
an Airbnb host in the US?
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Yeah, So, there are a lot of factors over the
past fifteen years, maybe most recently the pandemic. The pandemic
has caused a lot of people in the US to
travel domestically during that time, and people rented like rural
cabin houses, larger vacation homes, and that cause a lot
of hosts to poler into the market and set up
homes there. And now coming out of the pandemic, people
(01:43):
returning to cities going overseas again, and so some markets
are becoming saturated. So that's one thing where.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
I mean, you know, yeah, who could have seen this
coming when everybody was quitting their jobs to become airbnb hosts.
Everybody get those low interest rate more btgages because they
had x number of airbnb rentals that everybody was going
to because they couldn't travel internationally.
Speaker 4 (02:06):
Exactly exactly. I mean, I'm sorry to state the obvious.
All right, So where are we and what does that
mean for Airbnb?
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Yeah? And so I went to this conference in April
where there are like six hundred people talking about what
to do.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
And this was not an Airbnb organized what type of
conference was?
Speaker 1 (02:22):
It was organized by an online influencer who has himself
done some of these mid term rentals as they call it,
like thirty plus days rentals, where they market they find
people who are relocating for a job temporarily and they
live months to months.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
The organization finds the person or the person finds so.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
It's the host, an individual mom and pop person like
someone with nine to five who's just trying to call
up your local you know, hospitals. This guy, this online
influence of Jesse for Quz, just found an opportunity there
contenting the HR department of his local hospital in Modesto
in California and say, do you have travel nurses who
(03:05):
be coming to my city all the time and do
they need houses? And he's telling them, I have like
five properties available and you can house them all there.
And that's how he got things rolling. And now he's
telling marketing this strategy to six hundred people.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
It's super smart.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
It is really smart. It does, though smart raise the
question that, you know, the whole idea of a marketplace
like Airbnb taking that you know, what analysts and investors
call the take rate is because they have this platform
that they argue is safe because it has these reviews,
It has a way that you know, you can get
insurance if something doesn't work out, It has a history
(03:44):
of who has stayed there, how they've raided it. And
then there's a way that you can I don't want
to say arbitration because that's like a legal term, but
there's a way that you can use the platform to
resolve differences between the host and the person because let's
face it, this stuff doesn't always go smoothly, so how
do people do those things?
Speaker 1 (04:04):
So part of this strategy, there is a risk to it,
and maybe the startup cause is higher. You need to
vet the person who's staying at your home much longer,
but the payoff is that you won't have to do
that often because they're staying on a monthly basis. And
so yeah, a lot of these people vet people very
carefully and at least for some who are catering to
(04:24):
relocating employees. They have the employer as like a safeguard.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Carrolly, you got to make sure that they're not going
to rent it for thirty days and then put it
on Airbnb.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
Could you magic?
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Like the most read story, one of the most red
stories in the last hour, the so called Wolf of Airbnb,
who we talked about a little earlier.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
Who did things that weren't really on the up and up.
Does the Airbnb like this change?
Speaker 1 (04:46):
So Cheskey Brian Chesky has addressed some of this book
direct Movement in twenty one and he said, it's not
like a big number that's happening. A lot of these
people are still individuals who rely on Airbn because they
have just probably one rental. But obviously with the three
hundred thousand listings on, like a particular there's a platform
(05:07):
called Furnished Finder who has gained a lot of traction
out in New York City put down their Airbnb regulations
and people are scramping to find another platform. And so
there's we see this momentum going on, and to the host,
it's like just diversifying their marketing channels in a.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Way, because they'll they'll stay on Airbnb. But also they'll
have this as an option. Yes, oh okay, So how
much are they able to save or how much more
are they able to make by not giving that take
rate to Airbnb?
Speaker 1 (05:35):
It depends on your scale. So this online influencer slash organizer,
for example, he's now making at K a month in profit.
He manages seventeen seventeen rentals.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Does that not include does he sell the course to yes? Okay,
so that's what I was waking.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Yeah, so the course makes a million a year. It's
sixty five hundred dollars. And he attracted like thirty sixty
more sign ups after the conference in Aro, and there
was an attendee whose credit card card decline as well
because there's a lot of money.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Well, how you know, I am curious, like how you're
thinking about kind of how I mean you said it's
a small part of Airbnb's business.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
Is that correct?
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Yes? Yes? And like not everyone does this, Like not
everyone has the time to vet everyone so carefully. And
for a lot of mom and pop hosts who just
want to feel like a weekend or to supplement their income,
airbnbuld it's still a choice for them.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
I just remember somebody in our neighborhood who had some
properties and you know, would rend them out Airbnb, but
then was also then looking to be like rented at
to corporate people because they felt like.
Speaker 4 (06:45):
Pays more.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
It was just a whole different vibe and I almost
feel like this is taking that to the like next level.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Yeah, so some one host I talked to, she compliments
both strategies or short term and long term. So maybe
there's a week where you can't find someone to fill it,
they will try to still go on Airbnb. She takes
like fifty percent of her booking still on Airbnb, and
but on the side she has this property management business
(07:11):
herself as well. So people are getting creative.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
It's a really fascinating way to do this. We've been
spending time talking about Airbnb, but you also Rais at
the beginning of your story, you talk about verbo, and
that's yeah, vacation rental by owner is what it stands for,
but verbo is the way we say it is verbal
having the same challenge too.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
So they are a bit different in the sense that
they have not ever allowed like rooms to be listed.
They just do whole home rentals.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Yeah, that's how they try to differentiate themselves in their
advertising market.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, So like I guess for a lot
of hosts who operate on there, there are a lot
of people who list on Airbnb verbal and their own website,
So it depends what your property is. But for Airbnb's
a lot of like people would think of that as
their first avenue and sort of that's why we're seeing
(08:06):
this sort of diversification here.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
Is this expected to grab.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Yeah, I mean that we're talking to the influencer, like
he's seeing more students and there are other enterprise software companies,
we're seeing people making their own websites. So like from
that we can see itself that influence still going on.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
So Chesske has talked about this for years, as you mentioned,
But is this something that after doing this reporting and
seeing this growing movement Airbnb investors should be concerned about
it should be on their radar in a.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Way that we can see the company is actually doing
more to try to support hosts. They have made changes
to how let's say, helping host price their property as
well and also trying to weed out some of the
lower quality listings, as they say, so making a better
experience for everyone. So keep everyone on the potell.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Check out the story. It's in BusinessWeek, available on the
terminal and at bloomberg dot com. Natalie Long, Bloomberg News
tech reporter, joining us here in the studio. It's the
boss who doesn't like a little thunder Road, who doesn't.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
Like a little Bruce Bruce Springsteen.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Excuse me, well, the Stone Pony. Yes, you hear those
three words, And if you're like me and many others,
you think of.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
One man, Bruce Springsteen.
Speaker 4 (09:28):
Yeah, and it make no mistake of me, Jersey Girl,
I can say, you.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Can say that the Boss certainly is a huge part
of the Stone Pony. But as our next guest writes
in a new book it was just out last month,
it's not just a place for Springsteen and his fans, Carol.
It's a place that has become a quote international rock
pilgrimage for all types of musicians. And despite the fact
that once renowned venues like CBGB and the Cavern Club,
which is where the Beatles started, those are gone, the
(09:53):
Stone Pony, where Bruce got his start, it's still here.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Nick Corsinidi is a political correspondent for The New York Times.
He's the author of a new book, I don't want
to go home, The Oral History of the Stone Pony.
And he joins us here in a Bloomberg Interactive broker's studio,
so someone who knows all about it.
Speaker 5 (10:09):
Welcome, welcome, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 4 (10:12):
Since you do cover well politics.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Oh yeah, that's where we're going.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
We need to kind of start there if you don't mind, sure,
How are you thinking about this environment? How do you
think about democracy right now? Considering the developments of the
past weekend.
Speaker 5 (10:27):
Well, it's interesting how that's actually word that's being thrown
around a lot, especially from the right. You know, President Trump,
Trump's campaign speaker Johnson, Senator McConnell, they all had like
statements within an hour of Biden's letter being posted saying
that this is undemocratic or disenfranchising the fourteen million voters
(10:48):
who cast primary ballots for Biden, and they cast it
for Biden, not for Biden Harris, and that you know,
this was an anti democratic move. Now it's a bit
of a difficult message for them to carry, just given
everything that happened in January sixth, and you know a
lot of voting laws that have been passed by Republican
legislatures but it's certainly something that's starting to catch on
(11:09):
with the voters. You know, there was a poll in
the Washington Post about six weeks ago about the issue
of democracy and you know how important it was to voters,
and it was more than sixty percent said it was
extremely important. Now, the only thing that came close to
that was the economy. So this is vitally important to voters,
right yet they actually said in these six swing states
that they trusted Trump a little bit more than Biden
(11:29):
to handle those issues. So it's you know, it's something
that's been defining four our politics for the last four years.
You know, President Biden made his last major address before
the midterms on issues of democracy, and then Democrats did
very well in the midterms. So it's something that's very
much of the forefront of the conversation. Is everything's happening
with Vice President Harris, Democrats coalescing and all that.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
But was there was there an alternative to this sort
of coronation that we saw over the last twenty four hours,
because there are around one hundred days left, Like I
was there an alternative apart from you know, so many
I don't want to call them kingmakers, but truly, you
had people in the last twenty four hours on the
Democratic side coming out and not everybody and endorsing Kamala
(12:12):
Harris in a way that makes it so she is
the nominee without actually having appeared in a primary.
Speaker 5 (12:18):
The practical nature of where we are in the cycle
right now makes it really hard for anyone other than
Vice President Harris to kind of step up, because what
the Biden campaign has is staff, infrastructure, field offices, ninety
million in the bank, a fundraising apparatus that you know,
she says that she's raised eighty six million, I think,
which is a staggering number since the announcement twenty four
(12:41):
hours ago. No one else could do that. Like, if
someone who's extremely popular, thought of as a next generation
Democrat like Gretchen Whitmer, Gvin Newsom, Josh Shapiro, they'd all
be starting from scratch. Sure they might be able to
inherit some of the apparatus, but it'd be really, really hard.
And that's just we're talking about the practicality, right the
politics of trying to leap frog the first black woman
(13:03):
vice president and who's also going to now be the
first possible, you know, standard bearer for the Democratic Party
to try and take that away in the modern coalition
would just be really politically challenging.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
Do people know what democracy means?
Speaker 5 (13:18):
I think that's a really interesting question that that Washington
Post poll explores. It's become so polarized and politicized that
people ascribe democracy to different issues that aren't necessarily just
about voting, just about trying to overturn an election, trust,
an election, break into election machines, everything that you know,
when I write about it, that's my focus. But you
(13:38):
see people thinking about democracy just as like, well, if
the other side wins, it's a mortal threat to the
future of the country. Whether you're a Republican a Democrat.
It's kind of been going in this polarized way, and
so I think that the issue has certainly been politicized
and polarized and muddied in a way.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
But at the same time, I mean, it's simple and pure, right,
it's a government of all of us exactly.
Speaker 5 (14:01):
Well, there is even another debate where you hear, especially
on the right, more we're republic and at a democracy,
which you know would take the rest of this program
to quote the unpack, but it's definitely something that I
think is being effectively muddied. But again, when you have
a Democrat, say, who goes back to the original messeging
of this from a post January sixth, spring of twenty one,
(14:23):
with all the voting laws, like foreign president, I mean,
current president Biden really did a good job of that
in the fall of twenty two before the midterms, and
it did break through. So you wonder if there is
going to be a refocus on that. I mean, we're
already seeing January six ads again hitting the airwaves, right,
So I think this is going to be at the forefront.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
You cover voting rights and democracy, and we're gonna get
to the stone pony in a bit. We got a
great we got a great chunk of time with you,
So we got plenty of time. Do you think we'll
Is it fair to say that voting has changed just
in the two years since the mid terms or in
the four years since the twenty twenty election, like have
the rules in certain state's changed?
Speaker 5 (15:01):
Oh significantly, And there's often easier to vote. It depends
on where you are, and it depends on who you are.
There's been, you know, efforts to limit mail voting especially,
and so if you're in a state where they change
the mail voting rules and you were once a mail voter,
there's some things that you now have to be aware of.
There's efforts to say, like, let's say in Wisconsin, there's
(15:22):
been this whiplash about using dropboxes, which is where you
can bring an Asda bow drop it off just like
a mailbox. A lot of voters love that because you're
not bound by you know, whether a voting office is
open or not. Let's say you can't go during work
hours you're a shift worker. You could only go AT's
say six am or eight pm, you drop off your ballot.
It's it's easier for the midterms. The Wisconsin Supreme Court
(15:44):
said no, you can't do that, so all those voters
couldn't do that anymore. And then the newly constituted Wisconsin
Supreme Court, which now leans democratic even though they're nonpartisan.
It was once conservative. Now they're putting them back right,
so maybe voters can go use that. So that's just
one example of like the shifts. And there's also the
shift in the just the wholesale voting behaviors that has
(16:05):
really kind of defined everything since the pandemic. You know,
voting by mail used to kind of be a Republican advantage, Yeah,
Florida and Georgia. Like in Georgia where it's become such
a flashpoint where Republicans are limiting it. You know, it
was the Republican governor who brought.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
It to Georgia.
Speaker 5 (16:20):
George W. Bush and Carl Rover were absolute masters of
the vote by mail and using the mail. You know,
there's a whole book written about it by a Sasa Eisenberg.
So it's interesting to see the patterns behave the politics change,
and then yeah, there's a lot of laws that have
been changed.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
All right, speaking of a book, how does someone who
covers voting rights and democracy at the New York Times.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Man, you need a break after doing that, and you
got to write about something completely different, write.
Speaker 4 (16:43):
A book about the Stone Pony.
Speaker 5 (16:45):
So I in between the sixteen and twenty elections, I
was the New Jersey correspondent, of which I'm from loud
and proud New Jersey in amen and I grew up
going to the Stone Pony. And I grew up, you know,
going to Asbury Park to see punk music. And when
I was going in the nineties, in the early two thousands,
(17:06):
Asbury was very different. To put it lightly, it was
kind of dangerous. It was a ghost town. It was
very rough. You know, there was abandoned buildings everywhere. There
was this structure that was like an abandoned skeleton of
like an apartment complex that had been failed multiple times.
It just like you couldn't believe it that on the
Jersey Shore, you know, this finite like Gold Coast, on
the East Coast, that this one town could just be
(17:28):
so desolate. And that was my experience. But punk, we
don't care, and that was our stage. So we went.
And then due to covering politics and moving to DC
and going to college away from New Jersey, I hadn't
seen Asbury for a while until I came back in
twenty seventeen, and I was like, what happened? And so
(17:49):
a long time. It's a long time. It was like
from about like two thousand and six, probably two thousand
and five to twenty seventeen, and a lot changed, and I, like,
you know, as the Jersey course, and I was still
a political reporter, so I still had to cover you know,
the new Governor Murphy Corey Booker's eventual presidential campaign. That
was still like my main assignment, but I could still
cover some of the culture. And I wanted to tell
(18:11):
this story about this town that bounce back because, especially
having covered the twenty sixteen campaign, we learned about for
every Asbury, there's one hundred failed small towns, right, And
I wanted to tell that story that got at the
spirit of what Asbury is. And it's a music town,
and so I didn't want to just be like, it's
got a hotel and you know, some new restaurants and investors,
and well, that's all important, and you have to tell that.
(18:32):
That wasn't the spirit That felt important to me, to
tell why this town's renaissance is important. And so I
was like, Hey, this Stone Pony's still there somehow magically
in like open defiance of the expected lifespan of a
rock club. Let me use that as my narrative trojan
Horse to tell the story of Asby Park.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
I want to get right back to Nick korsindi political
correspondent for The New York Times, also the author of
the new book I Don't Want to Go Home, The
Oral History of the Stone Pony, Nick the Boss Bruce Springsteen.
He writes an introduction You got him for the intro.
But it's not just Bruce Springsteen who you spoke to
(19:10):
for this book, Steve van zandt Lofgren. Uh, the Jonas brothers,
all three are there more than three Jonas brothers. The
Jonas Brothers are.
Speaker 5 (19:20):
Three in the band.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
There's just three, okay, in the band, there's three Jack Johnson.
It's an incredible lineup, John Popper, Russell Crowe as well
Patti Smith. Uh, talk to me and talk to us
about how you were able to get all these incredible
people to speak to you for this Well.
Speaker 5 (19:39):
I mean from the political world, you're kind of used
to just slowly pulling threads to get more people to
talk to you. You know, one leads to another. Hey
do you know this person? Can you help introduce me
to this.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
We've got Chris Christie and that would make sense because
you're a political report.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
I did Chris Christie.
Speaker 5 (19:55):
That was actually while he was campaigning for president. We
did we did a video interview. Yeah, we just we
did a video interview and that was like my New
York Times thing, and then we shifted to lunch where
we talked about the pony. And then I went to
his event later and wrote a story off that which
interview was longer the Pony one. He's a big fan, clearly,
(20:16):
but it's you know it. I also think what was
interesting to me was how many people were willing to talk.
And I think it just speaks to this the weird
you know draw and allure that the Stone Pony has
for so many artists, in part because of the spirit
that like Springsteen, south Side and Stevie kind of like
imbued in the place. So Tom Morello calls him the
good ghosts that are in the Pony, and I think
(20:38):
so many artists feel that, and it really is kind
of like it works for so many different genres, right
Like Patti Smith felt that and she felt such a
connection to the club because it felt like one of
those clubs that helped her establish herself in New York,
the same way that like Mike McCready felt. The guitarist
and Pearl Jam felt an amazing connection there because it
(20:58):
reminded him of his origins when like crowds were on
top of you and you know, you could see everyone
in the in the crowd so clear that you could
read their beer labels, and what that felt like as
a musician, and so you know when people there's there's
a common phrase that like, you play small rock clubs
when you're on your way up and when you're on
your way down. But I think the Pony kind of
cuts across that a little bit because it creates that
(21:18):
bond with a lot of artists that they want to
get something back that they've you know, lost as they've
moved up, and they still play it. Russell Crow's a
great example. He he was playing with this band thirty
out for gruntsy he had for forever, and he booked
a tour right before Gladiator comes out when he's you know,
sexiest man in the world, one of the most A
List celebrities of all A list celebrities, and he had
(21:41):
booked Madison Square Garden Theater, not the full garden but
still like a six thousand person venue, and then the
Pony it's about six hundred and so once he's a megastar,
they were like, well, you got to cancel the Pony
because you're in the radius now, and he was like, no,
I'm going to cancel the Garden. I don't need that.
I want to do I want to do the Stone
Poney and like that. Just and he has an interesting
(22:01):
story in the book how he was actually going to
play in New York on September tenth, two thousand and one.
So playing at the Pony actually might have because he
was staying at a hotel right next to the Towers,
might have, you know, saved his life. But just the
fact that he gave up five thousand, five hundred fans
to play at the Pony and what that would feel like,
I think speaks to how so many people feel about
(22:23):
the pot.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Are you not entertained? I'm sorry I had.
Speaker 4 (22:27):
I mean, how did it come to be?
Speaker 5 (22:28):
Though?
Speaker 4 (22:29):
Like I think we just take it, not take it
for granted, just assume it just came to be. I
don't know, we assume it was Bruce Brings. How did
it come to be?
Speaker 5 (22:37):
Well, it opened in you know, kind of a desperate
time Fraspberry Park. It had experienced pretty traumatic race riots
a few years beforehand, and that caused some pretty big flight.
But what that also did is, as Stevie van Zandt
says so lyrically in the book, it left it to
us rockers, rogues, mystics and renegades. And I just I
can like we'll always hear him saying that, Yeah, in
(22:57):
my head and he just says it so effortlessly because
he's just such a lyrical person. And that created the
scene of musicians that you know, you wouldn't expect to
find on the Jersey Show. You find it in Motown,
in Nashville and New Orleans, but then for some reason,
you had it in Asbury Park. And once Springsteen starts
taking off, people start paying attention to it, and then
(23:18):
Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes start and they kind
of really helped create this sound of music. It's rock
and roll with horns and gospel and soul and R
and B, and it was a sound you hadn't heard elsewhere,
and it was dancy and people wanted to dance to
rock music again, right Like the whole guitar slinger thing.
It kind of made people watch music. You were dancing
(23:38):
again and people love that, and Bruce loved that, so
he starts coming. People start learning about it. There's a
famous broadcast of a south Side Johnny show in seventy
six on eleven radio stations across the country, and that
wasn't done that much. So now there's a scene and
a sound, and everyone wants to start coming. And then
when Bruce becomes really famous, it also becomes his home.
(23:59):
And you know in the book, the things of celebrity
that would bring you to New York in LA and
all the things that normal people do didn't interest me.
What interested me was where I was from. These people
mattered to me, and this place was interesting to me
and sustaining that scene. And so when you have a guy,
I mean, imagine right now, like if Taylor Swift picked
a six hundred person club and just showed up there
on Tuesdays, people be camping out right like you wouldn't
(24:20):
even a within ten block radius. He was that famous
after born, born in the USA, so that he was
still doing it created this spontaneity that lives on there
and it's it's maybe Brute will show up, but also
it's maybe like I'm seeing, you know, a metal band
and maybe Zach Wilde shows up, and or you know,
I'm seeing a punk band and maybe I'm seeing Taking
(24:42):
Back Sunday and the guys from Brand New come out,
or I'm seeing you know, Midtown and Brian fallon. Because
it it's the spirit of the place and like the
truest sense of the word, and it really I think
has just stuck in a way that like you can't
take it out, and that's what keeps artists from coming back.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
You writ in the book about the transfer of Asbury,
and I'm wondering if the Stone Pony will live on
into the future because it has changed the area around
it has changed so much.
Speaker 5 (25:10):
It's a great question. I think everyone in Asbury recognizes
that the Stone Pony is the kind of spiritual, beating
heart and soul of Asbury, and so as the towns
come back in a kind of very organic way. They've
done a great job at preserving that. There's new condos,
you know, the six million dollar condo, there's new development.
(25:32):
It's a money town right now. They're building condos everywhere.
But I think they understand that you can't touch the Pony.
You have to leave it there, and you kind of
have to leave the summer stage there too, because it's
become such a part of town and like, you know,
it's like this mini festival feel every night, and the
sounds echo across the boardwalk, so like even if you
don't have a ticket to say it was just at
(25:53):
the bouncing Souls of the Pony on Saturday. And if
you have a ticket. You were three blocks away on
the boardwalk. You could hear, you know, them playing hopeful romantic,
and so.
Speaker 4 (26:01):
That's pretty cool.
Speaker 5 (26:02):
You can't, you just can't remove that. If you do,
it's not Asbury anymore, right, it's just another wealthy beach town.
Speaker 4 (26:08):
Two bouncers did this right exactly.
Speaker 5 (26:10):
It started by two bouncers who were just like, I
want to do my own thing, and they did. And
you know, it's had us ups and downs. It's closed twice,
and it's certainly not a bouncer run bar anymore. It's
backed by major industry support, including Live Nation, but you
know it persists.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
I mean, listen, everybody talks about Asbury Park. I feel
like it's just something so much more. Nick, thank you
so much, really appreciate it did courus Aniti. He has
a new book out. He's, of course, political correspondent for
the New York Times. The book I Don't Want to
Go Home, The Oral History of the Stone Pony. This
is really fine, Thank you so much, good luck.
Speaker 4 (26:41):
This is bluebir
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