Jeremy Workman — “Walking Every Block, Hiding in a Mall”

Summary

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The Gist – Episode Summary

Podcast: The Gist
Host: Mike Pesca
Episode: Jeremy Workman — “Walking Every Block, Hiding in a Mall”
Date: October 25, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode features two engaging interviews with documentary filmmaker Jeremy Workman, highlighting his work chronicling extraordinary quests: first, with Matt Green, who set out to walk every block in New York City (“The World Before Your Feet”), and second, with Michael Townsend, who secretly lived with fellow artists in a shopping mall for four years (“Secret Mall Apartment”). The conversations explore the motivations, challenges, and philosophical takeaways from these unique projects, while delving into how such pursuits reflect and critique urban life and culture.

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Segment 1: Walking Every Block of New York City

(with Matt Green & Jeremy Workman; “The World Before Your Feet”)

Introduction to the Quest

• [05:54] Mike Pesca introduces Matt Green's audacious challenge to walk every block in NYC.
• Matt’s self-imposed rules required covering all public streets, as well as parks, cemeteries, beaches, boardwalks, and bridges.
• Matt has devoted nearly seven years to the endeavor, with about 500 miles left to walk.

Logistics & Motivation

• [06:43] Matt Green: “I have maybe 500 miles left, probably about 95% of the way there.”
• [07:03] Matt expands on his rules: “The basic rule is walk every block of every street, which then became every block of every public street... I’ll walk parks, cemeteries, beaches, other coastline, bridges, you know, various pathways.”
• [07:35] On thoroughness: “If there’s a long cul de sac... you have to walk all the way to the end.”
  Pesca, amused: “Jesus Christ.” Matt: “Tap the end with my finger. I watched you tap many.”

Documentary Perspective

• [07:57] Jeremy Workman on choosing Matt’s story:
  “By doing this really simple thing and being sort of meticulous about it and really passionate about it, all this sort of interesting stuff is exposed in this amazing city... you don’t really know just how deep it goes.”

Notable Observations and Quirky Details

• [09:43] Pesca revels in Matt’s obsessions with “barbershops with a Z in the title,” and discusses the taxonomy of Chinese restaurant names.
• [10:26] Matt notes urban oddities, like “animal cannibals” (businesses using cheerful mascots of animals for food stores).
• [11:08] Matt reflects: “...someone will mention a person like, ‘oh, I’ve been to his grave.’ And Gil Hodges is one of those. He’s in Holy Cross Cemetery. Yeah.”

Balancing Life and the Project

• [12:03] On dating:
  Pesca: “How do you go on dates if you have to go out and walk?”
  Matt: “I don’t go on a lot of dates. The date is, ‘do you want to walk?’”
• [13:10] Matt eschews regret: “I don’t even feel like it’s a sacrifice... this is just what I wanted to do and I didn’t want these other things.”

Attitude Toward Urban Sameness and Judgment

• [14:05] Matt describes the project as “an exercise in not judging. It’s... just about observing. And I think from that process, I’ve learned how to appreciate a lot of things that... maybe have some redeeming qualities that you could appreciate.”

Queens’ Street-Naming System Explained

• [17:15] Pesca asks Matt to explain the convoluted street system in Queens.
• [19:11] Matt delivers a poetic explanation: “Best avenues, roads and drives run west, but ways to north or south ‘tis plain, or street or place or even lane, while even numbers you will meet upon the west and south of street.” — Poem by Ellis Parker Butler, Flushing poet

Memorable Moments & Quotes

• Pesca: “You’re in every frame [of the film] except when they cut to the friends going dodge that bullet.” [20:46]
• Matt Green on movies: “I’m not going to pay theater prices. Are you kidding me?” [13:28]
• Matt on Staten Island: “You would love it. There’s a lot of awesome stuff in the city.” [14:53]
• On monotony: “My life prior to this... staring at a computer screen... no one ever asked me, like, ‘oh, isn’t that job so boring?’... walking two blocks that maybe have the same styles of architecture, like, I can deal with that.” [15:56]

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Segment 2: Living in the Secret Mall Apartment

(with Michael Townsend & Jeremy Workman; “Secret Mall Apartment”)

Background: Providence Transformation & Artistic Resistance

• [23:43] Michael Townsend describes Providence, RI, in the 1990s:
  “The city had big hopes and dreams. Buddy Cianci was at the helm... super corrupt, but... got things done.”
  Artists thrived in cheap mill buildings until a new mega-mall catalyzed gentrification and displacement.
• [25:50] “These two dreams, these two like... streets cross each other in around 2000, the mall opens, and developers are now like, hey, this seems like a pretty developer-friendly city. Let’s... bring in more developers... And there begins the great tension... hundreds of artists lose their studios and homes.”

The Secret Mall Apartment Scheme

• [28:15] After losing homes to urban renewal, Michael and others began stealthily living in Providence Place Mall:
  “In 2003... we did week in the mall based on the idea that we should get to know the mall intimately... your number one problem becomes where do you sleep at night?”
• [31:30] Jeremy Workman recounts first hearing of the story:
  “You hear it and you’re like, oh, this is some clickbait thing... But when you kind of start peeling that onion, you start realizing, like, wow, there’s so much more to this. It’s this stance against gentrification... It was this, you know, stage that they were creating to sort of show the world.”

Art, Protest, and Living at the Margins

• [33:16] Michael:
  “The reason we pulled it off for as long as we did is because of the other types of art that we were doing... We were used to sort of living in that gray space between legal and not legal... I feel that this is an important thing to do. And I’m willing to take the risk...”
• Michael and his team previously undertook a guerrilla 9/11 memorial in NYC using life-size tape silhouettes.

Documenting the Experience

• [36:17] Jeremy:
  “First of all, it was astonishing when I found out how much they had filmed. They had filmed 25 hours inside this secret apartment in this mall.”
• [37:13] Michael:
  “The reason we’re filming is because our tape artwork is temporary... That puts you in the habit of documenting everything... We were shooting it basically for in-house... That footage was parked on a hard drive... and we were able to handle it.”
  — On the unexpected value and survival of their documentation.

Technological and Cultural Context

• [40:03] Michael relates:
  “I was arrested about two months after the iPhone came out. So... the video is being shot at arm’s length... very different than it is now.”
• [41:42] Pesca observes that secrecy and subversion would be impossible today with social media:
  “The whole point of this was that no one could know. And that’s just totally antithetical to the ethos of today.”

Remembering the Era of Malls

• [42:23] Jeremy:
  “It reminds you about what malls meant... people really thought malls were these great places that we could all come together... It really was not that long ago.”

Standout Quotes

• Michael Townsend: “We were used to... living in that gray space between legal and not legal.” [33:31]
• Jeremy Workman: “One of the greatest, like, pranks you’ve ever seen committed to film... but then you start realizing... it’s this stance against gentrification... this artwork unto itself.” [31:30]
• Michael Townsend: “The reason we’re filming is because our tape artwork is temporary... That puts you in the habit of documenting everything...” [37:13]

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Notable Timestamps

• [05:54] – Introduction to Matt Green’s walking project
• [07:03] – Walking rules and logistics
• [09:43] – Eccentric urban details: barbershop names, animal mascots
• [13:10 – 13:33] – On sacrifices and moviegoing
• [17:15 – 19:11] – Renaming and organizing Queen’s streets; street number confusion
• [23:43] – Providence’s artistic heyday and the coming of the mall
• [28:15] – Secret mall apartment origins
• [31:30] – Peeling back the story’s deeper meanings
• [36:17] – Filming inside the secret apartment
• [41:42] – Impossible secrecy in the social media era
• [42:23] – What malls once meant

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Final Thoughts

This episode smartly juxtaposes two journeys: one of relentless urban exploration (Matt Green’s walk) and one of ingenious resistance to urban transformation (the secret mall apartment). Both are rooted in curiosity, a sense of mission, and a refusal to be passive amid the ceaseless shift of modern city life. Through Jeremy Workman’s eyes, the stories become meditations on observation, place, and subversive creativity.

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Recommended for listeners curious about:

• Urban exploration and street-level anthropology
• Art as protest and the artist’s life on the margins
• The changing meanings of city spaces in American life
• The interplay between personal obsession and public culture

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Transcript

[Mike Pesca]

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[Dana]

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[Dana]

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[Matt Green]

Nice.

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[Mike Pesca]

Get the new iPhone 17 Pro on.

[Michael Townsend]

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So what are we having for launch?

[Matt Green]

Dud.

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My work here is done.

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[Mike Pesca]

Hi, it's Saturday. It's the Saturday show. We give you one from the vault and one from the week. And oftentimes when it's one from the week, it's a spiel. So proud of the spiels, am I? I want you today. I'm going to bring you one from the week. That was an interview with the documentary filmmaker or documentarian if you will. Jeremy Workman. A workman like documentary filmmaker. And he has been on the show before. So this week on Monday he was on talking about secret mall apartment which were about some quirky people who lived in a Mall in 2018. He was on the show to talk about the world before your feet, about a quirky guy who walked every block of New York. I don't know if that sounds easy to you or hard to you.

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It's hard.

[Mike Pesca]

It's hard. Trust me, it's hard. Queens has a lot of little nook and cranny blocks. Then Staten island has a lot of blocks that now don't know shabby run down, out of the way, filled, strewn, if you will, with garbage. Those are just two of the five boroughs to give you some idea of how hard it is to walk every block of New York city. So in 2018, Matt Green, the subject of that documentary, was here, along with the director, Jeremy Workman. Jesse Eisenberg, who is the executive producer, he was also here. I told Jesse to sit this one out this time as we talked about the secret mall apartment, but he did executive produce that one. To the documentarian Jeremy Workman and his collection of quirky people who actually tell us a little something about ourselves. I don't want to oversell it, but please enjoy. And this time I can say enjoy. You know how on Saturday I always say, please enjoy this talk about the slaughter of the Ohinga. No, not this time. Please enjoy my two interviews based almost seven years apart with Jeremy Workman. Claude is oh, a pal, my AI assistant who has helped me with many tasks, tasks that you can see as say, a GIST subscriber or a just listener. So on. On the Mike Pesca webpage, we're starting to put together these little bundles to introduce the kind of interviews I do. I've done 10 years of shows, so I don't know. I don't know about the groupings, I don't know about which were the good interviews. So I started loading information into Claude. I loaded. Luckily we have a spreadsheet that actually Claude helped make loading information in asking Claude to suggest different combinations of different categories. And it's not up yet, but it's going to get there. And it really would have taken hours more without Claude and it wouldn't have been really, really good like I think it's going to be. So it thinks deeper about challenges than I would have. It is the sort of thing sometimes it does orthogonal thinking where I wouldn't have put this military expert and that science guy together and call it oh thought Leaders. So Claude was. I will divulge one of those services that I decided to pay for before I knew they would even advertise. And when they said, hey, you want to do an ad? I said, yeah. So I could say things like, claude Code is a game changer for developers. It works directly in your terminal and understands your intent, entire code base and handles complex engineering tasks ready to tackle bigger problems. Sign up for Claude today and get 50% off Claude Pro when you use my link. Claude AI the gist. That's Claude AI the gist right now for 50 off your first three months at Claude Pro. That includes access to all the features that I mentioned in today's episode. Claude AI the gist AI agents are.

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[Mike Pesca]

Matt Green is walking or has walked every block of New York City. It's an amazing feat, actually. It's literally two amazing feat. But I mean, that is beyond something other than a hilarious joke, which is when you watch this documentary about him called the World before your feet, you realize it's one thing to embark upon this, but it's another thing to actually follow through. It's kind of an amazing thing. And I like the documentary, I like some of the people behind it. So I gave it a shot. But I really love this documentary in ways I didn't expect to. I kind of expected the main character to be some hippie who is hard to live with. But no, he's an interesting guy. In fact, he's here right now as director, as the executive producer, Matt green.

[Jeremy Workman]

Hello.

[Mike Pesca]

Hello, Mr. Workman. Hello. Hello, Mr. Eisenberg.

[Michael Townsend]

Hello.

[Matt Green]

Hello.

[Mike Pesca]

Jeremy Workman. Jesse Eisberg. So, guys. Matt.

[Matt Green]

Yes.

[Mike Pesca]

Are you done?

[Matt Green]

I'm not done.

[Mike Pesca]

How many years have you been at it?

[Matt Green]

I've been at this for almost seven years now.

[Mike Pesca]

How much more you have?

[Matt Green]

I have maybe 500 miles left, probably about 95% of the way there. Okay.

[Mike Pesca]

So let's lay out the basics of your quest, the rules you set for yourself and what the logistics were.

[Matt Green]

So the basic rule is walk every block of every street, which then became every block of every public street. As I realized that there were also many private streets. So that's the core of it.

[Jeremy Workman]

Right.

[Matt Green]

But on top of that, I'll walk as many of the private streets as I can get access to. I'll walk parks, cemeteries, beaches, other coastline, bridges, you know, various pathways, boardwalks.

[Mike Pesca]

You have to walk piers. If there's a long cul de sac or dead end streets, you just have to step on it or you have.

[Matt Green]

To walk all the way to the end.

[Mike Pesca]

Jesus Christ.

[Matt Green]

Tap the end with my finger. I watched you tap many. There are many, many dead ends in New York City.

[Mike Pesca]

Now, before again, I'm just going to talk about publishing. Yeah. A career in retail, for instance. Yeah. Jeremy how do you find out about Matt and give us a little bit about your background?

[Documentarian/Filmmaker (possibly Jeremy Workman or assistant)]

So I met Matt years ago. I've been friends with him for a lot of years, and he was starting to do these crazy walking projects. He walked across the country, you might add. He's going out, he's doing it, and he's just sort of, you know, going through. Checking off these. All these streets. But in the process, you know, by doing this really simple thing, I mean, it's so simple. Just go out and walk. It's not something that anyone, any of your listeners can't do, you know, but by doing this really simple thing and being sort of meticulous about it and really passionate about it, all this sort of interesting stuff is exposed in this amazing city that, you know, we all know, New York City, but you don't really know just how deep it goes.

[Michael Townsend]

Yeah.

[Mike Pesca]

Jesse, how'd you find out about this project?

[Jesse Eisenberg]

Jeremy sent me a series of emails that I dodged. You know, while he was editing, he was looking for somebody to come on board who would give some kind of creative input and be a kind of more public champion of the movie. I've been asked to do things like that before. I never had any interest in that kind of thing. It's not really what I do. But, you know, So I watched five minutes that turned into 10 minutes, it turned into the whole movie. And then I watched it again that day with my wife. I said, like, I thought it was just, I mean, you know, I thought Matt is like the kind of real world, more, you know, humble analog of me. And so I could kind of relate to him. But as I showed it to my wife, she saw it as a story about, you know, a person trying to, you know, integrate into a city that's become stratified, you know, by walking and kind of bridging the gaps that are there. I showed it to my parents, who looked at him as kind of like a, you know, Kerouac figure, like somebody from their generation who, you know, who no longer exists because we're all, you know, indebted to our phones, et cetera, you know. So I think everybody takes something kind of personal from it.

[Mike Pesca]

So. I love your obsessions. I'm sure there are some that we don't get to, but in the movie, you're somewhat obsessed with barbershops with a Z in the title. I love that. I also. Have you done anything with Chinese restaurants and how there are usually only six different characters that interchange? You got the dragon and the panda and the guardian. I Haven't even between Golden Panda.

[Matt Green]

I haven't entered that world.

[Mike Pesca]

Oh, yeah, that would be a good one.

[Matt Green]

There's so many of those universes there. You know, I had a friend who. Who a good friend of his had this whole collection of photos in LA of all the signs of Dennis that had a tooth with a smiling face and its own teeth. And then I saw one in New York. Where was that tooth? But he was brushing his own teeth inside of his mouth.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, it's. I've seen collections of restaurants where the animal to be eaten is extremely happy.

[Matt Green]

There's a guy, Kevin Walsh, who runs this, runs the site Forgotten New York. Really great site. It was, like, very influential to me starting this and, you know, just that idea of paying attention to details. He has a great term for those, which is animal cannibal.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah.

[Matt Green]

So, like, you know, you'll see a pig on. In a pork store, like, holding a string of sausages or like a chicken, you know, stirring up a pot of chicken or something.

[Mike Pesca]

Did you take. What is the bridge that connects the Rockaways to Marine Park?

[Matt Green]

The Marine Parkway Bridge?

[Mike Pesca]

How long is that? And does that count as walking in New York? Of course it does.

[Matt Green]

It does. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I walked that.

[Jeremy Workman]

The former Gilhod.

[Matt Green]

The Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge. Yeah.

[Mike Pesca]

Thank God.

[Matt Green]

Yeah. And then there's the other one running up to the house.

[Mike Pesca]

So they didn't put him in the hall of fame, but they gave him a bridge.

[Documentarian/Filmmaker (possibly Jeremy Workman or assistant)]

But then they changed.

[Matt Green]

I was saying this to these guys earlier. Basically, this happens to me all the time, where someone will mention a person like, oh, I've been to his grave. And Gil Hodges is one of those. He's in Holy Cross Cemetery. Yeah.

[Documentarian/Filmmaker (possibly Jeremy Workman or assistant)]

I mean, there's a crazy. Like, Matt also has, you know, as you saw in the movie, has walked more the cemeteries than probably, you know, anyone. I mean, there's so many cemeteries in New York.

[Mike Pesca]

This movie, this is one of the reasons why I love the movie. So as I'm watching it, I'm taking notes and I write Greenwood, question mark, cemetery, question mark. And then, you know, 55 minutes in, there's the whole cemetery part. And then maybe a half hour and I'm like, dating, question mark. And we meet your exes.

[Matt Green]

Yeah, that was Jeremy. Jeremy had a lot of foresight. And in figuring out what questions people are going to have, I think, because I've heard other people make that comment that, like, he kind of anticipates what you're wondering about.

[Mike Pesca]

But that is my question. How do you go on dates. If you have to, if you have to go out and walk.

[Matt Green]

I don't go on a lot of dates. No, I mean, you know, Nikki meet in the movie. You know, we met because of the walk and we dated for a while. But I'm not a serial dater. I don't go on very many dates.

[Documentarian/Filmmaker (possibly Jeremy Workman or assistant)]

He's also, you know, $15 a day, so that doesn't help.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, he lives humbly.

[Matt Green]

The date is, do you want to walk?

[Michael Townsend]

Right. Of course.

[Documentarian/Filmmaker (possibly Jeremy Workman or assistant)]

I filmed you on dates. Sort of.

[Michael Townsend]

I mean.

[Documentarian/Filmmaker (possibly Jeremy Workman or assistant)]

No, I don't mean that.

[Mike Pesca]

Let me rephrase. Wait.

[Matt Green]

I filmed.

[Documentarian/Filmmaker (possibly Jeremy Workman or assistant)]

You don't know with, you know, with Nicki, for example. It seemed like you were out with, you know, almost like on a date you're walking together, you were picking raspberries in a public park, you know.

[Matt Green]

Yeah, well, I mean that was, that was post relationship. She's. She's still a very good friend of mine, but yeah, she's a very special person who, you know, was interested in me for those reasons, but I don't think that I would have much of a dating life.

[Mike Pesca]

Do you ever regret any of the things you've had to give up to pursue this lifestyle of mostly sleeping in friends houses and doing cat sitting and living on $15 a day, but also having this amazing. That's, you know, a bit physically grueling and occupies your every waking moment for years?

[Matt Green]

I don't, I don't regret. I don't even feel like it's a sacrifice. I think that's how it's portrayed sometimes. Like, oh, he gave up all this in order to do this. But it was like, this is just what I wanted to do and I didn't want these other things.

[Mike Pesca]

But there are other things. For instance, one of your ex girlfriends, I think it's Nikki talks about, you have no interest in movies. Like, never. Have you?

[Matt Green]

Yeah, it's not that I hate movies, but like, I'm not going to, I'm not going to pay theater prices. Are you kidding me?

[Mike Pesca]

Have you ever seen a Jesse Eisenberg movie?

[Matt Green]

I have.

[Mike Pesca]

Did you have to fake it when you met him?

[Matt Green]

No, I saw, I, I saw Zombieland.

[Michael Townsend]

Yeah.

[Jesse Eisenberg]

And that was. That was when you decided to give it up?

[Matt Green]

Yeah.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah.

[Matt Green]

Like, I want this, This, I want this to be my last movie.

[Mike Pesca]

Do you decry? Because I didn't see this in the documentary. In fact, you don't seem to negatively judge different neighborhoods. But what about chain stores and neighborhoods that seem similar to other neighborhoods? Does that pain you at All.

[Matt Green]

I mean, you know, I certainly have my own feelings on places and, you know, maybe those change from day to day too, and what mood I'm in. But yeah, I mean, the walk is definitely an exercise in not judging. It's, you know, just about observing. And I think from that process, I've learned how to appreciate a lot of things that, you know, before I would have said that I don't like those, because I like the sound of saying I don't like that because it represents something that I don't want to represent. But you're kind of just, you know, you're screwing yourself over when you do that, because it takes away this whole world of things that maybe have some redeeming qualities that you could appreciate. Instead, you just immerse yourself in this world of hating. I kept.

[Mike Pesca]

Because as I watched it, I kept thinking about Staten Island. Cause if I had the time, I would love to do the rest of it, except I would not love to do Staten Island. Not by the shore.

[Matt Green]

You would love it.

[Mike Pesca]

Well, the interior, where it seems like a suburb, where it seems like there's.

[Matt Green]

A lot of awesome stuff in the city. Go ahead.

[Documentarian/Filmmaker (possibly Jeremy Workman or assistant)]

That was a big revelation for me, too. That's. You know, I was also. Am also somebody who's been in New York for many, many years and had a very sort of Manhattan centric and how the, you know, the world sees New York City. And then I walked with Matt in many of these neighborhoods, including Staten island, and I was continually blown away. I mean, in Staten island, for example, you know, there was parks where there was just deer everywhere.

[Matt Green]

Wild turkeys.

[Jeremy Workman]

Wild turkeys.

[Documentarian/Filmmaker (possibly Jeremy Workman or assistant)]

We went climbing mountains in Staten island, even just the people that would come out in Staten island to talk to Matt were really interesting and diverse and a lot of different sort of ethnicities that you don't expect to even find. I was sort of still blown away by Staten Island.

[Mike Pesca]

But isn't there a lot of Staten island and aren't there a lot of streets that are like the street right before it? I mean, more so than other places?

[Matt Green]

You know, I don't know. I mean, maybe. Maybe there are parts of it where the streets are more similar than other places. But, like, you know, compare that to my life prior to this, which was, you know, staring at a computer screen doing, you know, this engineering that I wasn't interested in. You know, sitting in fluorescent lighting and, like, you know, no one ever asked me, like, oh, isn't that job so boring? Because it's a normal job that people have and people enjoy It. To whatever extent they enjoy it. And so to me, like, walking two blocks that maybe have the same styles of architecture, like, I can deal with that. It's not. It's not like I'm not going to die of boredom.

[Mike Pesca]

You ever go to Douglaston or Little Neck and then find you in Nassau county and like, fuck, I just spent a half hour in Nassau County.

[Matt Green]

Well, you know, it's interesting. Like, obviously, I have to make sure I walk every block in the city. And the boundary between New York City and these other municipalities is generally not marked, which always baffles me. You go from, like, the largest city in the nation to, like, a Little Town of 7000 People in Nassau county. And there's just. No, there's nothing there telling you did it. And so the difference is the street.

[Mike Pesca]

Numbers change, and some of the street numbers change.

[Matt Green]

Yes, but you're never, you know, you're never 100% sure exactly where the line is. Exactly where it is. So I always walk to the end of the block where the addresses change, you know, just to be certain. So I do have little small adventures into Nassau and Westchester after all of this.

[Mike Pesca]

Can you explain to me how the street numbering system and naming system of Queens works? Like, from the places to the streets to the.

[Documentarian/Filmmaker (possibly Jeremy Workman or assistant)]

That's probably one of the few people that can really.

[Matt Green]

I mean, I have a blog post written about it. It would be much clearer about it than this jumbled response I'm gonna give you. But, yeah, basically, you know, Queen became a borough of New York City in 1898 when the city consolidated. And at that point, it was just a bunch of different villages. And, you know, I think there was something like. I don't remember the number. There were, like, 30 Washington streets, Avenues, whatever, you know. Cause each of these had a different street named after George Washington.

[Mike Pesca]

Right.

[Matt Green]

And so the planners realized, like, we've got to get this all together. We've got to have one set of streets for this borough.

[Mike Pesca]

No, no, to Atlanta and Peach Tree, but go ahead.

[Matt Green]

Yeah, so. So they basically overlaid this, you know, imaginary grid on top of all these villages and did the best they could to kind of integrate them all into it. But what that means is you have certain areas where, you know, the space between 146 and 147th up here. When you go down to the southern part of Queens, now, there's like, three or four streets in that area. So you keep them all 146, and you add different suffixes to them. And same thing, you know, north, south, and east, west, street. So you have this whole jumble of numbers with avenue, street, road, place, you know.

[Mike Pesca]

Okay, okay, let me. So is there an order like, first there's the street, then there's the road, then there's the place, then there's the terrace.

[Matt Green]

Do you have a minute for me to pull this up on my phone?

[Mike Pesca]

This is like the greatest moment of.

[Matt Green]

My life because there's.

[Mike Pesca]

I have a minute.

[Michael Townsend]

Wait.

[Documentarian/Filmmaker (possibly Jeremy Workman or assistant)]

I'm supposed to accompany him. And we went to an intersection where they. Where I think it was. Matt can explain.

[Matt Green]

Oh, yeah. So. So what happens in Queens? In addition to having these multiple consecutive parallel streets that are the same number, that only differ in suffix, you have that with the north, south, and east, west. So if you take a diagonal from the northwest part of Queens and run down it, you'll hit all these places where the same numbers intersect. So not only do you have the same numbers in parallel, but now you have grids of intersecting streets.

[Mike Pesca]

Corner in 96 and 96.

[Matt Green]

Yeah. And so in Maspeth, there's. I can't Remember, is it nine or ten intersections of 60th and 60th. Just all. All consecutive neighboring intersections.

[Documentarian/Filmmaker (possibly Jeremy Workman or assistant)]

And I've been with Matt and filmed him going to every single one of those. Those.

[Matt Green]

Yeah, we thought that was going to be in the movie. Yeah, we thought that was going to be a big.

[Mike Pesca]

To get a shot of, like, every.

[Matt Green]

One of these combination cutting rooms.

[Mike Pesca]

That's for me. That's the DVD extra.

[Matt Green]

Yeah.

[Documentarian/Filmmaker (possibly Jeremy Workman or assistant)]

I shot so much of Matt walking around that there was a lot of stuff that never made it.

[Mike Pesca]

So.

[Matt Green]

So when they overlaid this, the street grid on Queens, and everyone was confused and angry that their street names are changing. This guy who lived in Flushing, he was a poet. Ellis Parker Butler. Yeah, Ellis Parker Butler, whose grave I visited, by the way. This is the poem he came up with to explain the suffixes to everybody in Queens to find locations. Best avenues, roads and drives run west, but ways to north or south tis plain or street or place or even lane, while even numbers you will meet upon the west and south of street. Yeah, so that was part of, I guess, the PR push to, like, you know, so good make this pill easy to swallow. For everyone whose street names changing.

[Mike Pesca]

That's the I before E except after C of Queen Street. Yeah, yeah. The world before your feet is executive produced by Jesse Eisenberg, directed by Jeremy Workman, and I think the credit said featuring Matt Green. Yes, it's certainly featuring him.

[Matt Green]

Feet.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah. Oh, I didn't even think of that.

[Documentarian/Filmmaker (possibly Jeremy Workman or assistant)]

Yeah, Matt's in like every frame.

[Mike Pesca]

He's in every frame except when they cut to the friends going dodge that bullet. Thank you guys so much for coming in.

[Matt Green]

Thanks for having us.

[Documentarian/Filmmaker (possibly Jeremy Workman or assistant)]

Thanks.

[Mike Pesca]

The gist is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations.

[Jeff Bridges]

Morning Zoe. Got donuts.

[Dana]

Jeff Bridges, why are you still living above our garage?

[Jeff Bridges]

Well, I dig the mattress and I want to be in a T mobile commercial like you teach me. So Dana.

[Dana]

Oh no, I'm not really prepared. I couldn't possibly at t mobile get the new iPhone 17 Pro on them. It's designed to be the most powerful iPhone yet and has the ultimate pro camera system.

[Jeff Bridges]

Wow, impressive. Let me try. T mobile is the best place to get iPhone 17 Pro because they've got the best network.

[Matt Green]

Nice.

[Dana]

Jeffrey, you heard them.

[Jeff Bridges]

T Mobile is the best place to.

[Mike Pesca]

Get the new iPhone 17 Pro on.

[Michael Townsend]

Us with eligible traded in any condition.

[Jeff Bridges]

So what are we having for launch?

[Dana]

Dude, my work here is done.

[T-Mobile Ad Voice]

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[Mike Pesca]

So a lot of times you maybe have seen this in your city. Retail establishment will go up and then in conjunction they'll have apartments and they'll give themselves a name. I have a list of a couple here. The residences at Park District. That's in Dallas or in Los Angeles you might run into the residences at Westfield Century City. Or in Chicago, there's the residences at New City. See the trend. It's not just an apartment, it's the residences. Gussies it up, makes it grand. Well, I'm going to tell you about another such residence and it was a residence with residents. So much so that they just came out with a documentary about it. It is called secret mall apartment. So none of this highfalutin branding. And the man who spearheaded the secret mall apartment was Michael and is Michael Townsend, the director of the documentary Secret Mall Apartment, a title that doesn't give away too much, but really does tell the story, is Jeremy Workman, who returns to the gist. Hey, Jeremy. Hey, Michael. Thanks for coming.

[Michael Townsend]

Howdy. Nice.

[Documentarian/Filmmaker (possibly Jeremy Workman or assistant)]

Thanks for having us. Fun to be back.

[Mike Pesca]

So we will start. And this is a bit of a recitation of some of the things in the documentary. But Michael, you're a. What's the demonym from someone from Providence. Providence Providential. What would you.

[Michael Townsend]

Oh gosh, proud folk.

[Jeremy Workman]

You're.

[Mike Pesca]

Prof. You're. So you were among the proud, proud folk, God fearing people and you saw your city essentially slowly destroyed, especially the places that you had been living and maybe squatting. You're, you're, you're a guy with an artistic bent. So situate us to the construction of this mall, which is this promised revitalization project that Mayor Buddy cnc, who the documentary doesn't even get into that, though that could have been another 20 minutes. Situate us as to what you were thinking and what you were seeing as this mall was going.

[Michael Townsend]

So the 90s here in Providence, Rhode island were great decade of transformation. The city was had big hopes and dreams. Buddy Cianci was at the helm and he was a mayor who for the short version of it is super corrupt.

[Mike Pesca]

But great at it. You gotta give him the nod.

[Michael Townsend]

The man got things done.

[Mike Pesca]

So yeah, they made a musical about.

[Michael Townsend]

With two things simultaneously happening because of him. You have a big mall, a super regional shopping mall, one of the last in the United States to be built. It's going to be the largest construction project in Providence's history. It's going to be the largest tax break in Providence's history. And it's going to open in 1999. Simultaneously, Buddy Cianci is turning a blind eye to all of the slum landlords who are letting artists live and work in gigantic industrial mill buildings. So all of a sudden you've got a super center of three to 500 artists within a couple city blocks, all living, working on the cheap. On the cheap means you're paying 200 to $300 a month and you can live and work. So this creates one of the strongest epicenters of artists in the United States.

[Mike Pesca]

Both of these, plus risd, plus Brown, plus a number of natural factors. I mean, there's a kind of punk music scene that maybe started because of it, but took advantage.

[Michael Townsend]

Right. So there are artists internationally who understand that if you move to Providence, you are pretty much guaranteed cheap, big space. These two dreams, these two, these two like, like streets cross each other in around 2000, the mall opens, and developers are now like, hey, this seems like a pretty developer city. Friendly, friendly city. Let's bring in more developers. The next big project was at that art supercenter. So all these industrial mill buildings were viewed as blank canvases. Artists were living in them. But developers looked at it as blank space for the next strip mall. And there begins the great tension. Why don't we knock down all of these mill buildings and start building new retail? New and new, like, business businesses. And that's going to create a big, big problem that's going to. That ripple effect means hundreds of artists lose their studios and homes.

[Mike Pesca]

Right, Right. And the place where you were living as artists face the mall was maybe.

[Michael Townsend]

A mile from the mall.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah. But there are no entrances for you. That's the. Yeah, it follows the curve of a river and the railroad tracks. But that is not for you. And the prices, as are documented, are not for you.

[Documentarian/Filmmaker (possibly Jeremy Workman or assistant)]

And also make, you know, just keep in mind, this is a mall that.

[Jeremy Workman]

A lot of people know. This is the Providence Place Mall. Right on downtown.

[Mike Pesca]

This is the people. This is the Providence Place Mall. Of course, I know it's the biggest.

[Jeremy Workman]

Landmark in downtown Providence.

[Matt Green]

Yeah.

[Mike Pesca]

Let me tell you, my biggest heartbreak of the last year took place pretty much in the Providence Place Mall.

[Matt Green]

Yes.

[Mike Pesca]

I went to see St. John's proceed to John Calipari in what was called the Dunkin Donut Center. Now it has another name, but everything's kind of attached to the mall, thanks to this buddy's Yancey project. So, yeah, I saw that, and I cried at the Providence Place Mall. But now I was enraptured by what I found was going on there. So you and your friends, Michael, move in. Move in. Officially? Not officially. Quite unofficially.

[Michael Townsend]

Well, in 2003. So this is a couple years after it's opened. We have spent those years between the opening of 99 and 2003 fighting to save our own neighborhoods. That is a lot of really boring stuff. Those are city hall meetings. Those are activist campaigns trying to at least save the mill buildings themselves in the hopes that that would sort of anchor the ability for this neighborhood to have its historical backbone in place. That fight ends with my mill building, where I live, getting knocked to the ground. And so we lost our homes and studios during this whole time. The mall is sort of seen as the biggest domino in the chain. Like, it's not. It's not the first one, but it's the one that we can clearly see, has tips, the ones that knock over our homes. And we.

[Mike Pesca]

Right, right. Like before the Death Star, the Empire had those cruisers that would threaten star systems, but with the Death Star, it became.

[Michael Townsend]

That's a good way of saying this. Yes. So. So we're going after the cruiser at this point, and we started exploring them all. So in 2003, we did week in the Mall. Week in the Mall was based on the idea that we should get to know them all intimately. And in the course of doing that, if you commit yourself to saying, we're not leaving this building for a week, your number one problem becomes where do you sleep at night? Right, right.

[Mike Pesca]

So before we get to that, were you conscious that you were doing recon for a bigger project? Be it political or.

[Michael Townsend]

No, not at all. And the movie does a really good job of showing these incremental steps. And this is, this is, this is a really, you know, I'm giving you sort of like the blurted short version of it. But this is the challenge for Jeremy because he's got to try to, in under an hour and a half, dissect why this could possibly happen. And he came to Providence and talked to the best talking heads he could to construct the context for it. And I've been very, very, you know, lucky. Last year was on the film festival circuit. I got to watch this movie in other cities and see the responses of audiences relate to it immediately. They're like, this is not a Providence issue. This is a, like big city issue. And it's national. And so I think the people can connect to this movie no matter where you are.

[Mike Pesca]

Right. So you and three others at the beginning did a week in the mall and figured you would and did essentially camp out in really crappy spaces, whatever you could find, barely indoors. A lot of. Of outdoor urban camping. But then. And we'll get to how it really becomes true that the. The title of the movie is apt. Secret Mall Apartment. But Jeremy, when you got in there, when you first. Either first or second heard about the story, it's reported on the news, the headline is very weird and quirky. Secret Mall Apartment. Did you know that there was so much beyond that, beyond that fact, that very attention arresting fact that actually adds up to a story with an ar.

[Jeremy Workman]

I. I mean, not at first. And I think that's what's incredible about this story, is that you hear it and you're like, oh, this is some clickbait thing, you know, like, oh my God, they live in a. In a secret apartment in a busy mall for four years, you know, and it's just, you're Immediately like, oh, this is insane. This is some prank. And what was fascinating was that kind of process of getting to know Michael and the seven other artists that it was so much more than that. And that was when I. It was a real revelation to me that there was so much more to this and that it could really sustain as, as a whole film. I mean, obviously this is one of the greatest, like, pranks that's probably ever been put to film. I mean, that we should mention that when they lived in the mall for four years and live in, I put in quotes, you know, they were going back and forth using it as this headquarters. But when they were in this space for four years, they were filming everything along the way. So you. It really is like one of the greatest, like, pranks you've ever seen committed to film. But then when you kind of start peeling that onion, you start realizing, like, wow, there's so much more to this. It's this stance against gentrification. It's this fight against, you know, what was happening in Providence at the time. It's this like, you know, middle finger to, you know, what was happening in the early 2000s with the corporatization of our cities. It's this artwork unto itself. It was this, you know, stage that they were creating to sort of show the world. So had all this sort of shape shifting aspect. And that also really appealed to me.

[Mike Pesca]

Michael, was it all those things to all the other residents?

[Michael Townsend]

Yes, we. It is something that the. Jeremy got the green light to be the director of this movie because he seemed to understand that the mall narrativism is obviously the draw in. But you're dealing with a team of eight artists, artists who are making lots of other artworks. And those other artworks are informing who they are as people and how they approach. Approach this puzzle of trying to live in the mall. Like, the fact that we pulled it off for as long as we did is because of the other types of art that we were doing. We were used to sort of living in that gray space between legal and not legal. And two years leading up to making the apartment in the mall, that team of eight artists were engaged in a gigantic rogue September 11th memorial in Manhattan where we had dedicated our time to doing life size, like really simple life size silhouettes of every single airline passenger and fireman who died at the World Trade center. And that's 500 locations drawn directly on the buildings of Manhattan without permission. That turns you into somebody who's a little bit, hopefully this isn't a negative phrase, but like, Like Art righteous. Where you're like, I feel that this is an important thing to do. And I'm willing to take the risk to draw on this building without permission. Be it a federal building, retail construction, you know, bank. We're just gonna. We're gonna do it. We're gonna donate.

[Mike Pesca]

We should point out that Michael is the world's best, or perhaps only, tape artist. The Silhouettes are done in tape, which is great. It's a statement, especially with 9 11. It's a statement of impermanence. Now, some of it. And this is all in the movie. We should also point out that when connected, all of the silhouettes formed hearts on the island of Manhattan. But apparently, I would take it, since you see a couple silhouettes right there on a fire station, that those guys at least loved what you were doing. And we all see footage of people tearing the tape down. So it must have been many different reactions while you were doing this. Yeah, yeah. You would drive down from Providence, you would put up this tape. The righteousness of the artist. I'll editorialize and say the beauty of the art.

[Michael Townsend]

Yeah.

[Mike Pesca]

I want to ask you, though, in terms of you, Jeremy, as the director and the art and the aesthetic of the movie, it was. It's very important that it was filmed at the time. So this wasn't all done or told in retrospect. There is existing footage of this precursor, of course, to an iPhone that had really shitty and grainy footage. But it could record audio, and it did record footage. My question is, did you wish that the footage were better? Because obviously, the quality of it lent something. But sure. Did you ever at times say, oh, my God, I can't even use this. If only I could.

[Jeremy Workman]

Yeah. I mean, it was.

[Documentarian/Filmmaker (possibly Jeremy Workman or assistant)]

First of all, it was astonishing when.

[Jeremy Workman]

I found out, like, how much they had filmed. They had filmed 25 hours inside this secret apartment in this mall. So when I say that, I mean, like, literally them furnishing it, bringing in, you know, china, hutches, furniture, you know, kitchen supplies, couches, going through security and through the caverns of the mall. And at one point, the couches up.

[Mike Pesca]

The stairwell shot is unbelievable.

[Jeremy Workman]

It's staggering, you know, and in one of their biggest, grandest gestures, they decide to build a cinder block wall inside the secret apartment in this busy mall and all this. They're filming. They're filming. And they're filming in really impressive ways. And they're all using this camera that, you know, Michael probably bought it, you know, like Radio Shack at the time for $89.

[Mike Pesca]

That was shooting at Probably a lot more, actually.

[Michael Townsend]

Yeah.

[Mike Pesca]

But it was knowing. Knowing Tandy Prices back in the day.

[Jeremy Workman]

It was shooting at 320 by 240, like 12 frames a second or something like that. And, you know, when you as a documentary filmmaker, when you hear that, you're like, oh, crap, I'm never gonna be able to release this movie because, you know, you could never put that on the screen. But what was so heartening was that the footage was so good that they captured. They really filmed everything. That the quality, the technical quality doesn't matter just because. Because it's so incredible to sort of watch this and be alongside. And, you know, a lot of people ask Michael, as you might, Mike, that, you know, were they trying to make a documentary the whole time? And really, I think the answer is like, no. It seems like you guys were just kind of, like, capturing footage.

[Michael Townsend]

Yeah. Big question in Q&As. So I've been done close to 100 Q&As. That's. So people watch the film, and after the film, we answer audience questions. And a big one is like, why did you film, like, if Was it ever meant to be a movie? No, Like a hard, hard no on that. The. The reason we're filming is because our tape artwork is temporary. It is designed to be put on walls and removed shortly after. And that puts you in the habit of documenting everything, documenting the finished product, documenting the process. And so this team of artists had gotten really used to. In the two years leading up to us building this apartment, turning the camera on ourselves, and trying to capture what we were doing. And so when we were filming, we were filming it with just sort of our normal kind of, like, cinematic mentality, which is like, ah, we got long shots, close shots, odd shots, conversational shots. So we have all the benchmarks that will help Jeremy in the future. Not knowing that Jeremy's ever going to exist. We were shooting it basically for in house. There's eight of us. Three or four of us might be doing an action, and we want to share with the other team.

[Jeremy Workman]

But.

[Michael Townsend]

But that footage was parked on a hard drive. And that hard drive, it's remarkable that as a digital file, it survived for almost 20 years, and we were able to handle it.

[Jeremy Workman]

It's also not just footage. It's, like, incredible, like, dialogue. Like, he. Michael, like, breaks up with his wife at the food court, and it's, like, recorded in this, like, crappy camera that, you know, nobody has seen. And, like, they're having debates about the meaning of the secret apartment. They're they're discussing all their art practices and what they're planning to do. And it's just incredible what they were able to capture. And it's just a reminder about, you know, recording at that time and how it translates to now. It's wild.

[Michael Townsend]

Yeah. To that point, I was arrested about two months after the iPhone came out. So that sort of gives you a sense of where we are in the tech timeline. So people are not in the habit of turning a camera on themselves, especially video. So the video is being shot at arm's length. The video is being shot by placing the camera near us and just letting it roll. And the, the relationship to the camera is very different than it is now. If I point an iPhone at anybody, the assumption is it's going to be shadowy.

[Mike Pesca]

When you broke up. So when you broke up in the food court, did she say, you took me to the finest restaurant around?

[Michael Townsend]

Right, right. In town, yes.

[Mike Pesca]

So what you just said, the timeline of technology, it very much impressed upon me so much of this film. I was thinking exactly about the time period. So much of it was very early, aughts, little details. At one point, one of you says, we got to see every movie. So that was cool. I said to myself that would be unexceptional in 2025. Another. Yeah. Another aspect of it and want to get to this more was everyone was unified by doing something and something positive about 9, 11. I don't think there is a unifying force that especially artists or street artists would be driven by today. The biggest thing was today it would be almost impossible, I think, for artists or anyone to embark upon a project this ambitious that is kind of this cool and not tell everyone about it.

[Michael Townsend]

It.

[Mike Pesca]

The whole point of this was that no one could know. And that's just totally antithetical to the ethos of today. It couldn't happen today. No one would be able. Eight people couldn't keep this off social media today.

[Michael Townsend]

Right. And I think not just those eight people but. But the entirety of the mall population and society itself. So inevitably somebody would point a phone at us in a parking garage and be like, who are these fools with cinder blocks? Lol.

[Jeremy Workman]

Yeah.

[Michael Townsend]

And start posting. So there would be a record of our activities just from the pedestrians who are filming all the time.

[Jeremy Workman]

I also think it does this neat thing where it's like, it reminds you also about like what malls meant, you know, besides the changing time of social media and technology. You're reminded like, oh yeah, like it wasn't that long ago when. And people really thought malls were these great places that we could all come together and be together and they were gonna save our communities. It really was not that long ago.

[Mike Pesca]

Jeremy Workman, Michael Townsend are the director and main subject respectively, of Secret Mall Apartment. Gentlemen, thank you so much.

[Michael Townsend]

All right, thank you.

[Jeremy Workman]

Thank you so much for having us. Mike.

[Documentarian/Filmmaker (possibly Jeremy Workman or assistant)]

What a blue.

[Mike Pesca]

And that's it for today's show. Cory Wara produces the gist, Ashley Kahn's our production coordinator, Jeff Craig runs our socials, and Michelle Pesca runs around doing it all. Oomperu G Peru. Do Peru. And thanks for listening.

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