Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: I'm Reevesweidermann, and I wrote The Battle of Fishkill for
Speaker 2: New York Magazine, and it's the story of the week.
Speaker 1: Every time my wife and I would drive from Manhattan
Speaker 1: to our hometown of Husick Falls, New York, we pass
Speaker 1: by this town of Fishkill, and sometimes I'd look out
Speaker 1: the window and wonder do we need gas? I now
Speaker 1: know I should have wondered many many more things about Fishkill.
Speaker 1: Writing is hard.
Speaker 3: Who's got that kind of time when you're already busy
Speaker 3: trying to be Jon stand So it turns on a mike.
Speaker 3: Maybe the twitdles enough because a journalist Trand has got
Speaker 3: in that jewel jibes. Single story.
Speaker 2: Just listen, people speak.
Speaker 3: Conversation Film with information is the story.
Speaker 1: Over a decade ago, a man from the Bronx had
Speaker 1: a dream. That dream was to build an I hoop
Speaker 1: in a town called Fishkill, New York. This dream led
Speaker 1: him to find his true calling, the one that brought
Speaker 1: him even more joy than giving people Rudy two d
Speaker 1: fresh and fruities, one that has cost him millions of dollars,
Speaker 1: all of which he says were well spent. That calling
Speaker 1: was revenge. Reeves Widemann wrote about the epic battle to
Speaker 1: build an I hoop in Fishkill for New York magazine.
Speaker 1: How'd you find this story?
Speaker 2: Someone happened to be visiting family in Fishkill, New York,
Speaker 2: and was driving down the street and saw these signs
Speaker 2: that we're talking about some kind of weird conspiracy that
Speaker 2: was unfolding. The one thing I remember being on the
Speaker 2: sign was it said learned the Truth, like it was
Speaker 2: something out of the X Files kind of. And and
Speaker 2: so this person had just kind of read some stories
Speaker 2: I'd written and sent it along as something they thought
Speaker 2: might make for a fun story.
Speaker 1: Wow, So who put these signs up?
Speaker 2: The man who put these signs up is a guy
Speaker 2: whose name is Dominic Broccoli.
Speaker 1: That's his real name.
Speaker 2: That is his real given birth name. Great name. He
Speaker 2: is a character who lives up to his name in
Speaker 2: many ways. Comes from an Italian family, as you might
Speaker 2: be able to guess. His family owned a restaurant, popular
Speaker 2: Italian restaurant in the Bronx for decades. He shut it
Speaker 2: down after his father died, business had changed and opened
Speaker 2: an eye hop. Proceeded to open a number of eye hops.
Speaker 1: And does that make you a lot of money? Because
Speaker 1: Dominic rich for his eye hops.
Speaker 2: As he told it to me, he's doing very well
Speaker 2: for himself, so much so that it allowed him to
Speaker 2: fund this effort to build another IHOP in the town
Speaker 2: of Fishkill, about ninety minutes north of New York City.
Speaker 2: The one in Fishkill was meant to be his fifth
Speaker 2: and his largest and most elaborate.
Speaker 1: Yet the fifth, much like the ninth Symphony, is always
Speaker 1: the hardest.
Speaker 2: That's true.
Speaker 1: So where's the problem start.
Speaker 2: Initially, it's just a real estate play with a cousin
Speaker 2: of his. He actually bought this property back in the
Speaker 2: eighties just as an investment. But eventually he decided, I'm
Speaker 2: going to put in a strip mall here. The problem
Speaker 2: starts in two thousand and seven. And the backdrop here
Speaker 2: is that Fishkill and much of kind of Hudson Valley,
Speaker 2: New York, is steeped in Revolutionary War history.
Speaker 1: Is there a Battle of Fishkill?
Speaker 2: There was no Battle of Fishkill. What there was in
Speaker 2: Fishkill was the Fishkill supply Depot, which is one of
Speaker 2: these sort of artifacts of history that was incredibly important
Speaker 2: and also a little bit boring to look back on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I got bored when you said supply depot, I'll
Speaker 1: be completely honest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's kind of the end of it,
Speaker 2: and it sort of tells you most of what you
Speaker 2: need to know. It was a place where when George
Speaker 2: Washington's troops needed muskets or rations or whatever, they would
Speaker 2: get them from there. So that's the backdrop. If you
Speaker 2: go to Fishkill now, it's like any town in America.
Speaker 2: There's chain restaurants, there's hotels, there's a Sam's Club. There's
Speaker 2: a big gap distribution warehouse for the clothing company and
Speaker 2: built on top of where this supply depot used to be.
Speaker 1: It's just a new kind of a supply depot. It's
Speaker 1: got the gap and Sam's Club.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's got everything the modern America needs. There's long
Speaker 2: been a rumor in town that there might be a
Speaker 2: mass grave somewhere in Fishkill of Revolutionary War.
Speaker 1: Soldiers, you mean, like a cemetery.
Speaker 2: A cemetery, And there's a couple of reasons to think that. One,
Speaker 2: there's reports from the Battle of White Plains, which was
Speaker 2: a major battle in the Revolutionary War, and how tons
Speaker 2: of bodies were brought to Fishkill, And if you read
Speaker 2: certain historical texts, there was reason to think one possible
Speaker 2: place for the cemetery was Dominic BROCCOLI's property. So in
Speaker 2: two thousand and seven, the state of New York has
Speaker 2: a Historic Preservation office and they asked Dominic to do
Speaker 2: a study and to actually dig into the ground and
Speaker 2: see what was there. They went through with the dig,
Speaker 2: hired in a team of archaeologists led by a guy
Speaker 2: named Bill Sandy, and they spent about a month digging
Speaker 2: a couple of large trenches on Dominic's property, found some artifacts,
Speaker 2: and eventually, sort of towards the end of that month,
Speaker 2: they found what appeared to be a row of graves.
Speaker 2: So Bill Sandy dug into one of the graves, hit bone,
Speaker 2: found a skull and said, okay, this is it. We
Speaker 2: finally found the cemetery. In his words, he thought, this
Speaker 2: is going to be a national monument tomorrow case closes.
Speaker 1: Are people excited? Like? Are historians or journalists excited about this?
Speaker 2: At the time, the discovery was covered in The New
Speaker 2: York Times. Chuck Schumer Senator Chuck Schumer a year or
Speaker 2: two later, showed up in Fishkill part of a campaign.
Speaker 2: He was at the time looking to expand this program
Speaker 2: that preserves military sites and what really led to a
Speaker 2: lot of the attention was another archaeologist did what's called
Speaker 2: a ground penetrating radar study, which is basically pushing a
Speaker 2: thing that looks kind of like a lawnmower across the
Speaker 2: ground and it gets readings from what's underneath.
Speaker 1: And that's sounds fake. This sounds like those guys on
Speaker 1: the beach looking for metal.
Speaker 2: I think it's only a little bit more advanced than that.
Speaker 2: And the report that came back included a line that
Speaker 2: said something roughly to the effect of, we found some
Speaker 2: three hundred more anomalies as they called them, that appeared
Speaker 2: to be like the graves. Oh so, at that point,
Speaker 2: Dominic BROCCOLI's property, which was going to be a strip mall,
Speaker 2: was suddenly being called New York's Valley Forge and being
Speaker 2: described as possibly the largest cemetery of Revolutionary War soldiers
Speaker 2: anywhere in the country.
Speaker 1: Okay, so what's the plan? Is the government going to
Speaker 1: buy it from him?
Speaker 2: Chuck Schumer had showed up on this notion that the
Speaker 2: federal government might be able to step in by the
Speaker 2: property turn it into a national park of some kind.
Speaker 2: The problem is, the American Battlefield Protection Program, as it
Speaker 2: is called, has the word battlefield in it.
Speaker 1: And it should. The more I think about this, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to go visit what was formerly a cemetery
Speaker 1: and it's not a cemetery anymore. This sounds like a crap.
Speaker 1: This doesn't sound like an interesting place to visit.
Speaker 2: That has always been kind of the uphill battle. And
Speaker 2: so the group of people that were trying to convince
Speaker 2: you that you're wrong was a group that sort of
Speaker 2: formed after the body was found, and they called themselves
Speaker 2: the Friends of the Fishkill Supply Depot, and they basically
Speaker 2: came up with a plan to try to turn this
Speaker 2: site into some thing like Jamestown where there's kind of
Speaker 2: this working archaeological dig.
Speaker 1: No one's building another Jamestown.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the Friends of the Fishkill Supply Depot had
Speaker 2: this very grand vision for what this was going to become.
Speaker 2: And I would say, in some ways it's fair to
Speaker 2: say that it was naive to think that it would
Speaker 2: become this big, huge, massive tourist attraction.
Speaker 1: Who are these people who are into the idea of
Speaker 1: building a new Williamsburg without peanut soup. It's a weird
Speaker 1: that's the only reason they got r Yeah, it's.
Speaker 2: A weird sort of local mishmash of people.
Speaker 1: Is that a way of saying old people?
Speaker 2: I think they would push back on that characterization, but
Speaker 2: I think by and large that's fair to say. The
Speaker 2: group was made up largely of the kinds of people
Speaker 2: who show up to town board meetings to complain about X,
Speaker 2: Y or z. Another faction of people who were sort
Speaker 2: of Revolutionary War re enactors.
Speaker 1: Who's running this group the Friends of the Fishkill Supply Depot.
Speaker 2: The president of the Friends is a guy named Lance
Speaker 2: Ashworth is a West Point graduate and an FBI agent,
Speaker 2: like real, actual FBI agent. He was involved in, you know,
Speaker 2: catching an Israeli spy in New Jersey back in the
Speaker 2: two thousands.
Speaker 1: Does he look like an FBI agent?
Speaker 2: Yeah, classically, you know, burly guy, shaved head. Where Dominic
Speaker 2: is incredibly outgoing and all over the place. Lance is
Speaker 2: very straightforward and kind of buy the book. So he's
Speaker 2: running it with kind of this support crew of Bill, Sandy,
Speaker 2: the archaeologists and these re enactors.
Speaker 1: Okay, so what does Broccoli do once these people get
Speaker 1: together and try and save this land.
Speaker 2: At first, he tries to work with them. He's kind
Speaker 2: of like, well, okay, maybe I'm not gonna be able
Speaker 2: to build my strip mall. So these guys can buy
Speaker 2: the property, then good luck to them. So he gives
Speaker 2: them a chance to buy it. We're talking probably a
Speaker 2: couple million dollars to buy this property. They can't come
Speaker 2: up with the money, and so it's sort of back
Speaker 2: to the drawing board, and Dominic sort of offered this chance. Well,
Speaker 2: I could give you this small part of the property
Speaker 2: where we found the graves, and you could just keep that.
Speaker 2: But the friends their position was, we think there's bodies everywhere.
Speaker 2: We think this whole thing should be a park, not
Speaker 2: just the half acre you want to give us. The
Speaker 2: negotiation kind of falls apart at that point.
Speaker 1: So it seems a good compromise is that there'd be
Speaker 1: some area where the cemetery actually was, that's some kind
Speaker 1: of historical site. But then you get your sweet sweet
Speaker 1: eye hop in the property without the graves. It's not
Speaker 1: going to work.
Speaker 2: That's the best of all worlds. But what starts to
Speaker 2: happen is Dominic starts taking a look at other parts
Speaker 2: of the property and does some more digs to kind
Speaker 2: of see what's under there. And he does another dig
Speaker 2: and they find half a dozen more spots that seem
Speaker 2: like graves. They find some bones, So.
Speaker 1: He keeps looking for a spot for an eye hoop,
Speaker 1: and they keeps.
Speaker 2: Kind of thinking. He keeps thinking, Okay, if I dig
Speaker 2: over here and I show there's nothing there, then that's
Speaker 2: somewhere I can build and maybe the rest of it'll
Speaker 2: be fine.
Speaker 1: But he keeps finding bones, keeps finding.
Speaker 2: Some more things, and then eventually he talks to one
Speaker 2: of his archaeologists about that initial study that showed that
Speaker 2: there were some three hundred bodies buried on the property,
Speaker 2: and this other archaeologist points out that the report just
Speaker 2: said they were anomalies, not graves, and anomalies, in archaeologists speak,
Speaker 2: could be any number of things. It could be it
Speaker 2: just means that there's something under the ground. It might
Speaker 2: be a boulder, it might be a tree stump, it
Speaker 2: might be like a rodent burrow.
Speaker 1: Wait, so all like the New York Times story like
Speaker 1: there might be wrong. There may not be three hundred
Speaker 1: soldiers buried under there.
Speaker 2: Yes, So Dominic once he found that out, he had
Speaker 2: another team of archaeologists dig into some of the places
Speaker 2: where the anomalies were found, and in every single case
Speaker 2: they didn't find anything, which was very surprising, shocking to
Speaker 2: the person who had conducted the study. They said it
Speaker 2: they almost never, you never get it that wrong. And
Speaker 2: then what made Dominic even more suspicious was that in
Speaker 2: a couple of the places, it seemed that the dirt
Speaker 2: under the ground had been recently disturbed thereway, implying what
Speaker 2: what Dominic came to believe is that the friends of
Speaker 2: the fishkill supply depot were planting bones that they were
Speaker 2: hoping Dominic would find in an effort to make it
Speaker 2: seem like there were hundreds and hundreds of Revolutionary war soldiers,
Speaker 2: when in fact, in Dominic's conception, these were just bones
Speaker 2: that had been buried yesterday.
Speaker 1: Wait, so the accusation is that the FBI agent who
Speaker 1: runs this group to save this area might have been
Speaker 1: grabbing bones, burying them from some late at night from somewhere.
Speaker 1: FBI guys can get bones anywhere, and they burying them
Speaker 1: late at night in the ground in order to save
Speaker 1: this piece of land and not turn it into an
Speaker 1: ie hop. Yes, wow, okay, And what are the other
Speaker 1: tactics the friends are using besides possibly bearing fake bones
Speaker 1: in order to win this battle?
Speaker 2: So they were trying to push this kind of promotional
Speaker 2: campaign pr campaign. And they had a connection to a
Speaker 2: local community college and there was a class there and
Speaker 2: I think sort of video production, and got a couple
Speaker 2: of students in the class to make a video but
Speaker 2: basically about the history of the depot, largely from the
Speaker 2: friend's perspective, telling the story of why it's important to
Speaker 2: preserve this property.
Speaker 1: Propaganda.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's I think a fair way to put it.
Speaker 1: Much like the painting of Washington crossing the Delaware. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a giant piece of propaganda.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So Lance Ashworth, the head of the Friends,
Speaker 2: started working with his community college class along with another member,
Speaker 2: a guy named Alec Crosby who had joined joined the Friends.
Speaker 2: And Alec Krasby was an unusual figure in that he
Speaker 2: was young relatively, he was in his thirties, and he
Speaker 2: just kind of always seemed to be available to help
Speaker 2: the Friends with stuff, and so he jumped in with
Speaker 2: Lance to help with this community college project. And Lance
Speaker 2: had told the kids do not go to the property.
Speaker 2: If you do, the landowners gonna call the police on you.
Speaker 2: But while Lance is away, Alec Crosby tells the kids,
Speaker 2: let's go let's go over and visit the property. Let's
Speaker 2: go get some b roll. The kids show up and
Speaker 2: within a few minutes there's a Mexican restaurant across the
Speaker 2: street called the Maya Cafe, and within a few minutes,
Speaker 2: Dominic Broccoli walks out of my A Cafe just happens
Speaker 2: to be there at the same time that these kids
Speaker 2: are there, walks over, tells them come on over to
Speaker 2: the Maya Cafe. Let's have some drinks and I'll show
Speaker 2: you my presentation about why I think the friends are
Speaker 2: lying about what's on the property and why you should
Speaker 2: believe me and not them.
Speaker 1: That's a great pivot. Instead of arresting them, just try
Speaker 1: and convince them. That's brilliant.
Speaker 2: I know, soft carrot, there's a stick. And so Lance
Speaker 2: greets this his terrible news when Alec tells him.
Speaker 1: And because they stop making this documentary, he wins them over.
Speaker 2: It kind of created this tension in the group. Two
Speaker 2: of them were like, whatever this is, I just need
Speaker 2: to graduate and get this done. Let's just make this thing.
Speaker 2: And then you had two kids who were like, no,
Speaker 2: there is actually a conspiracy going on. Let's fight. Let's
Speaker 2: get to the bottom of this and so sort of
Speaker 2: tore the group apart.
Speaker 1: When we come back, the friends of Fishkill Supply Depot
Speaker 1: will start to wonder if something fishy is going on.
Speaker 1: But first our advertisers have an incredible offer on some
Speaker 1: fake eighteenth century skeleton bones and boison berry syrup. Okay,
Speaker 1: so these community college kids go onto Dominic BROCCOLI's property
Speaker 1: despite being warned to shoot some of this video. But
Speaker 1: he sees them from this Mexican restaurant and then walks
Speaker 1: over and offers to buy them drinks, which seems a
Speaker 1: little too convenient, right, It was a.
Speaker 2: Little unusual, like, why, of all days was Dominic Broccoli
Speaker 2: there at the precise exact time that these kids are there.
Speaker 1: He is just at this cafe with a presentation ready
Speaker 1: to go.
Speaker 2: Like on his laptop, open, lengthy presentation, just like ready
Speaker 2: to go and spend a couple hours with some college kids.
Speaker 1: When he's a guy who lives in the Bronx doesn't
Speaker 1: even live there.
Speaker 2: Pretty strange. And so by this point, let you know,
Speaker 2: Lance emails the friends in this kind of spy thriller
Speaker 2: way to just say, keep things to yourself. Spies are
Speaker 2: at play once again in Fishkill.
Speaker 1: Just like the Revolutionary War, just like the revolution they
Speaker 1: were when there was a Hercules Mulligan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. There there were actual spies in Fishkill, and
Speaker 2: in fact, there was a very famous spy named Enoch Crosby,
Speaker 2: who is an American spy based in Fishkill.
Speaker 1: Well the same name as Crosby, as the young guy
Speaker 1: in Friends.
Speaker 2: You are starting to piece together what it took the
Speaker 2: friends along time to piece together.
Speaker 1: Well, it helps I write your story.
Speaker 2: Which is the fact that Alec Crosby was not Ali Crosby.
Speaker 2: He was, in fact a spy, a private investigator whose
Speaker 2: real name is Ian Bondi, hired by Dominic Broccoli to
Speaker 2: infiltrate the Friends of the Fishkill Supply Depot, dig up dirt,
Speaker 2: all in an effort to scuttle their plans.
Speaker 1: Wait how long is Ian Bondi spending on this spy mission?
Speaker 2: Years years of his life. Yeah, I think he'd got
Speaker 2: other assignments. But for about three years he was regularly
Speaker 2: going to meetings of the Friends of the Fishkill Supply
Speaker 2: Depot under an assumed name.
Speaker 1: Is this the craziest job that guy's ever had?
Speaker 2: He did tell me at one point about like having
Speaker 2: to like sit in someone's backyard to see if aliens
Speaker 2: were landing. So that's stranger, but I think this was
Speaker 2: you know, as he said, he lived in the area,
Speaker 2: and this kind of became an all consuming thing where
Speaker 2: his even his friends and family started calling him by
Speaker 2: his assumed name name by Ala Crosby. And then he
Speaker 2: said that he had girlfriends who didn't know his name.
Speaker 1: I can't believe, to save a possible I hoop, you
Speaker 1: would date women under a fake name. That's a devotion
Speaker 1: to craft.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The one time he told me that he felt
Speaker 2: really nervous was there was a moment when Lance had
Speaker 2: brought one of his colleagues from the FBI to one
Speaker 2: of the meetings, and so suddenly Ian described himself as
Speaker 2: sitting there like between two FBI agents in his own
Speaker 2: fit of paranoia. When the meeting was over, he said,
Speaker 2: he rolled up his sleeves and just wiped down the
Speaker 2: table to in case they were onto him and thinking
Speaker 2: of snacking his fingerprints.
Speaker 1: So the group's run by an FBI agent. How does
Speaker 1: an FBI agent get fooled by like a spy who's
Speaker 1: normally getting hired to make sure that aliens don't appear
Speaker 1: in your backyard.
Speaker 2: I think Lance did defend himself, and I think reasonably so.
Speaker 2: When you start running volunteer organization dedicated to historic preservation
Speaker 2: and you don't think that you're going to be infiltrated
Speaker 2: by a paid spy.
Speaker 1: You must get made fun of so badly at FBI
Speaker 1: headquarters that you've been fooled by. Dominic Broccoli is like
Speaker 1: amateur spy.
Speaker 2: I don't think it was a great look for him.
Speaker 1: Okay, what else did this spy find out for Dominic Brocoli.
Speaker 2: The main thing he was there to do was just
Speaker 2: collect information. So Alic Crosby was showing up to all
Speaker 2: these events with a recorder in his pocket.
Speaker 1: He was all wired up.
Speaker 2: He was wired up, and they were just trying to
Speaker 2: catch the Friends in a lot of cases just talking
Speaker 2: shit about Dominic. One of the sort of best examples
Speaker 2: was they were at this event and this woman who
Speaker 2: was served for a time as the vice president of
Speaker 2: the Friends, was joking with a group of people that
Speaker 2: Dominic Broccoli had connections in the cement and stone business,
Speaker 2: which she then elaborated on by saying begins with an
Speaker 2: m ends with an a.
Speaker 1: Oh, this is an anti Italian American slur.
Speaker 2: It does seem so basically, and without much evidence, the
Speaker 2: friends were trying to connect Dominic to the mob. Dominic
Speaker 2: then turned around with this and in a few other
Speaker 2: cases sued members of the friends for defamation. And he
Speaker 2: had by this point had started giving them all nicknames.
Speaker 1: This woman's name the friends.
Speaker 2: All the friends got nicknames. This woman. Her name was Barbara,
Speaker 2: and so he started referring to her as Barbara the bigot.
Speaker 2: Nice Lance Ashworth, for all of his supposed exaggeration about
Speaker 2: what might be on the property, was now sir Lance
Speaker 2: lies a lot.
Speaker 1: This is very Trumpian.
Speaker 2: Well I thought so too, as Dominic told me, this
Speaker 2: is just how people talk in the Bronx.
Speaker 1: Is they give dads from the Bronx. My dad doesn't
Speaker 1: give people weird nicknames.
Speaker 2: And Trump's from queens, so you know. But anyway, the
Speaker 2: last nickname was for a guy named Marty Bister, and
Speaker 2: the nickname Dominic gave him was bone burying Bister. And
Speaker 2: the reason for that, yeah, it's a little too too
Speaker 2: many syllables. What it happened to lead to that nickname
Speaker 2: is that Alec Crosby had been at a meeting and
Speaker 2: recorded Marty Bister saying to another member of the friends,
Speaker 2: were you there when we buried the bones?
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And you know when Dominic hered that, he said,
Speaker 2: this is it. This is the evidence I've been seeking
Speaker 2: that all along, they in fact had buried bones on
Speaker 2: my property. So he freaks out, Sue's Marty Bister and
Speaker 2: the friends. This is the moment when Alec Crosby's identity
Speaker 2: is revealed, because he has to reveal himself through this lawsuit,
Speaker 2: and it suddenly enters the debate as a possibility that
Speaker 2: maybe the friends of the Fishkill Supply Depot actually did
Speaker 2: bury human bones on the property.
Speaker 1: Do you think they buried bones?
Speaker 2: I don't, but I have talked to people I would
Speaker 2: consider to be reasonable and sober minded in Fishkill who
Speaker 2: are not willing to rule it out.
Speaker 1: So it's not insane that it's possible.
Speaker 2: It's insane. It would be insane to have done this.
Speaker 2: It's almost impossibly far fetched, and if true, would be
Speaker 2: such a stupid thing to do that it's hard.
Speaker 1: You did endanger your FBI career, You go to jail. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just for a Revolutionary War re enactment site. It
Speaker 1: seems like a lot.
Speaker 2: But Dominic Braccley is convinced of this, and does.
Speaker 1: The local government get involved at any point? Are they
Speaker 1: sty out of us?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Well, part of this is when you develop a
Speaker 2: piece of property, you have to get a bunch of approvals.
Speaker 2: So this development very much came up at endless town
Speaker 2: hall meetings as Dominic tried to pursue various approvals. In
Speaker 2: his mind, very much the local government was out to
Speaker 2: get him. The sort of most concrete example took Luice
Speaker 2: in twenty nineteen during an election for town supervisor, which
Speaker 2: is basically mayor. Candidate's basically ran on an anti Continental
Speaker 2: Commons platform.
Speaker 1: Their platform was just against his strip mall. It was
Speaker 1: that big a thing in this town.
Speaker 2: I believe it was one of his you know, five
Speaker 2: got like five things, and this is one of them.
Speaker 2: But that guy won in November. In December, there was
Speaker 2: set to be a meeting where Dominic was getting his
Speaker 2: final approval that would more or less clear the path
Speaker 2: for him to go forward. But at this meeting, and
Speaker 2: it was before the new supervisor was supposed to take over,
Speaker 2: At this meeting, just coincidentally, one person was sick, one
Speaker 2: person's wife was sick, one person resigned, and then someone
Speaker 2: else got stuck with a flat tire in Westchester, like
Speaker 2: five minutes before the meeting, so they couldn't hold the meeting.
Speaker 2: The approval gets pushed into the new mayor's term, and
Speaker 2: he more or less successfully for several years, just pushed
Speaker 2: off this approval several years.
Speaker 1: How long does this whole thing last? Is this like
Speaker 1: longer than the Revolutionary War itself?
Speaker 2: We have past the market which George Washington was finally successful.
Speaker 2: The bones were found in two thousand and seven. It's
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three. Dominic has not started building anything. He
Speaker 2: still says that he intends to and plans to. At
Speaker 2: this stage, it's difficult to imagine anything happening other than
Speaker 2: it staying in this kind of stalemate where it seems
Speaker 2: destined to exist.
Speaker 1: How much is Dominic Broccoli spending on this project? Is
Speaker 1: it ever going to make it back in eye hop money?
Speaker 2: He claims it's in the seven figures, that it's over
Speaker 2: a million dollars, and I think into the millions of
Speaker 2: dollars at this point. And he has said to me
Speaker 2: now that it's not about the money for him anymore.
Speaker 2: It's about getting revenge. But at this point between the
Speaker 2: lawyers and the archaeologist and his paid spy. It's hard
Speaker 2: to imagine him, ever like fully making it back.
Speaker 1: So there's no imminent eye hoop in Fishkill.
Speaker 2: If I had a nickel for every time Dominic told
Speaker 2: me he was about to put a shovel in the ground,
Speaker 2: I'd be as rich as he is from his eye hops.
Speaker 2: I have a feeling this fight will be with us
Speaker 2: for a while. We'll just have to see whether the
Speaker 2: iap itself actually gets built.
Speaker 1: Reeves Wideman, you wrote the Battle of Fishkill for New
Speaker 1: York Magazine, and you are a true American. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for coming on.
Speaker 2: Happy to be of service to my fellow countryman.
Speaker 1: I was at the Metropolitan Museum in New York last week.
Speaker 1: I tell you this only to let you know how
Speaker 1: cultured I am. I also saw jazz at the Vanguard,
Speaker 1: which has even less to do with the point I'm
Speaker 1: trying to make. I saw the painting of Washington crossing
Speaker 1: the Delaware. It is huge, like picture the biggest wall
Speaker 1: of your house and then double it, and the frame's
Speaker 1: even more ridiculous. Gold everywhere, an eagle on the top,
Speaker 1: cannon's on the bottom. In the painting. There's just all
Speaker 1: these shivering rowers, struggling and pushing chunks of ice out
Speaker 1: of the boat's way, and Washington is just standing on
Speaker 1: this boat looking like he's about to deliver an aria.
Speaker 1: It's just overt propaganda, and we're still using the same
Speaker 1: propaganda to sell this country's story to ourselves and to me.
Speaker 1: That story is that we should be allowed to build
Speaker 1: I hops whenever and wherever we want. I mean, isn't
Speaker 1: that what Washington fought for.
Speaker 3: At the end of the show, what's next for Joel Stein?
Speaker 3: Maybe you'll take a naper poker round online.
Speaker 1: Our show today was produced by Kate mccauliffe and Nishavenka.
Speaker 1: It was edited by Lydia Jean Kot. Our engineer is
Speaker 1: a Mandy Kate Wang, and our executive producer is Catherine Giraudou.
Speaker 1: Our theme song was written and performed by Jonathan Colton
Speaker 1: and a special thanks to my voice coach Vicky Merrick
Speaker 1: and my consulting producer Lauren Salasnik. To find more Pushkin podcasts,
Speaker 1: listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your podcasts. I'm Joel Stein and this is
Speaker 1: Story of the Week.
Speaker 2: Dominic in his conception of building his I hop, he
Speaker 2: was going to lean into the Revolutionary War history and
Speaker 2: he was going to have the weight staff at this
Speaker 2: at this I hoop wearing like tricorn hats and bonnets.
Speaker 2: That's so yeah, that's.
Speaker 1: A compromise for me. I'm taking that as a win.
Speaker 1: If one bowl of peanut soup with your pancakes and
Speaker 1: that's that'll do it all I need.
Speaker 2: Yeah,