#294 That Daredevil Steve Brodie, 'King of the Bowery'

The Bowery Boys: New York City History

Tom Meyers

Places & Travel, History, Documentary, Society & Culture

4.7 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 11 July 2019

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

EPISODE 294: A tale of the 'sporting life' of the Bowery from the 1870s and 80s. A former newsboy named Steve Brodie grabs the country's attention by leaping off the Brooklyn Bridge on July 23, 1886. Or did he? The story of Steve Brodie has all the ingredients of a Horatio Alger story. He worked the streets as a newsboy when he was very young, fighting the bullies (often his own brothers) to become one of the most respected newsies in Manhattan. He experienced his first taste of adulation and respect as a minor sports celebrity, participating in pedestrian competitions across the country. Back in New York, Brodie started a family and promptly lost most of his money at the race track. He yearned to do something athletic and attention grabbing again. TheBrooklyn Bridge, completed in 1883, was a crowning architectural jewel linking two major cities; Brodie witnessed much of its construction during afternoons diving from East River docks. He now proposed an outrageous stunt that would garner him instant fame and fortune. He would jump off the Brooklyn Bridge! Was Steve Brodie a hero or a fool? A daredevil or a con artist? His story provides a window into the 'sporting men' life of the Bowery and a look into what may possibly be the greatest hoax of the Gilded Age. boweryboyshistory.com Our thanks to Grant Barrett of A Way With Words Featuring clips from the 1933 film The Bowery, the 1949 Warner Brothers cartoon Bowery Bugs and the 1958 recording of "The Bowery" by Billy Randolph & The High Hatters Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/boweryboys

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Bowry Boys episode 294 that daredevil Steve Brody. Hey, it's the Bowry Boys
0:08.1	Support for the Bowry Boys is provided by our listeners
0:11.5	Join us for as little as a dollar a month by visiting patreon.com slash Bowry Boys
0:20.8	Hi there, welcome to the Bowry Boys. This is Greg Young
0:23.9	It's just me this week Tom is away on a well-deserved holiday break
0:28.6	I'm around town working on a different project at the moment and actually
0:32.5	There's one part of this thing that I'm working on that such a summertime tale that I want to share it with you this week
0:38.8	And that is the story of Steve Brody a mostly unknown figure today
0:45.1	Who would have been the hero of almost every boy and girl in the late 19th century a gilded-age superhero
0:52.5	Who seemed to defy the laws of gravity in 1886 when he left from what was then the most famous bridge in America and then walked or rather
1:04.1	Swam away without a scratch and by the way if ever in the history of the Bowry Boys podcast
1:10.5	We had an episode that required the disclaimer do not try this at home
1:15.4	It's this one
1:17.0	Of course the bridge I'm talking about is the Brooklyn bridge the colossal architectural marvel which had just opened three years earlier in
1:26.4	1883 now today there are millions of Steve Brody's
1:31.9	His reasons for risking his life in this way were simple
1:36.3	Bame and fortune rewards that he did receive more or less in a way
1:42.2	He perfected the art of social media showmanship during the gilded age
1:47.4	125 years before social media even existed a sort of Instagram celebrity before the era of Kodak film
1:55.2	Of course it was the newspapers that made Steve Brody and with their attention
2:00.1	He became the self-proclaimed king of the Bowry
2:03.6	He was so famous in his day that his name even entered the English language with the phrase
	...

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