Michael “Kaves” McLeer has spent his life building for Brooklyn.

From writing graffiti in Bay Ridge and forming Lordz of Brooklyn with his brother, to painting, tattooing, filmmaking, The Brooklyn Firefly and The Brooklyn Pop, Kaves moved between worlds and made each one his own.

Heidi Hartwig sits down with Kaves to talk about Brooklyn, family, ambition, loss and the place carrying him through his darkest days and brightest ones.

Kaves did not build a career around Brooklyn. He built a body of work for Brooklyn.

A Brooklyn Dream returns Saturday, September 26, at The Brooklyn Pop in Industry City.

TICKETS https://fareharbor.com/embeds/book/thebrooklynpop/items/746868/calendar/2026/09/?full-items=yes&back=https://thebrooklynpop.com/

Watch or listen to Friends From New York: In Conversation on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.

Clayton Patterson has spent decades documenting the people, streets, artists, activists, outsiders and underground communities of New York’s Lower East Side.

In this conversation, we talk about the camera that gave him access to worlds most people never saw, the 1988 Tompkins Square Park riot, the Pyramid Club, tattoo culture, community, gentrification, and what it means to preserve the people behind a city.

Clayton’s archive holds thousands of hours of Lower East Side life, documenting a New York often overlooked by traditional media and institutions. His footage of the 1988 Tompkins Square Park riot became one of the defining records of that night.

Some of the people we speak with you’ll know. Some you won’t. That’s part of the point.

FFNY In Conversation is a living history of New York, told by the people who shaped it, carried something forward, built something here, or are helping decide what comes next.

This isn’t celebrity culture.
It’s city culture.

Everybody wants a friend from New York.
This is where you meet them.

Watch FFNY In Conversation on YouTube and follow Friends From New York for new episodes.

Heidi Hartwig talks with G-Bo the Pro (Gil Vasquez) — a man living a double life as a New York mixtape legend and a fixture of the Keith Haring world, where the two rarely overlap. From East Harlem block jams and teen nights catching Little Louie Vega at Heartthrob to the art market's games and Haring's staggering output, G-Bo and Heidi get into duality, reinvention, and finding your tribe. Plus the Knicks, bringing back the cassette, and where to find Keith's murals still standing around the city.

Ask DJ MOS how to save a stuffy, confused room and he doesn't hesitate: Michael Jackson's "Off the Wall" to open it back up, Stevie Wonder's "All I Do" to send everyone home happy. In this episode, Heidi Hartwig sits down with the veteran New York DJ — born Masoud Obana Semple — to talk about the craft of reading a crowd and the thrill of dropping a record no one saw coming and watching them go off.

Born in Brooklyn and raised in South Side Jamaica, Queens, MOS traces his obsession back to hearing "Sucka MCs" on a boom box across the street and seeing Run-DMC on Reading Rainbow — a childhood also full of classical piano, his dad's jazz and yacht rock, and soca at home. He tells the story of chalking his ID as a teenager and sneaking out of his parents' White Plains house to catch the train to The Tunnel, timing the whole night around the 5 AM train back so he'd never get caught. That first taste of club culture — house upstairs, hip-hop in the library with DJ Riz and Scissor Hands — turned him into one of the DJs he used to stand and watch in awe.

Heidi Hartwig talks with DJ Hesta Prynne (Julie Potash) — from her Hot 97 upbringing and feminist rap group Northern State to a Rolling Stone review that got Questlove to bring them on tour with The Roots. He later taught her to DJ, leading to Bonnaroo, Q-Tip, and eight years spinning for Spotify. Now a licensed therapist building Music Connection Therapy, she and Heidi get into why music heals, what the dance floor is really for, and a younger crowd that calls Passion Pit "grandpa."

DJ and producer Scram Jones sits down with Heidi Hartwig of Friends From New York to trace his journey from break-dancing at a Pepsi picnic as a six-year-old to becoming one of New York's most respected selectors and beatmakers.Scram breaks down how he went from a Fisher Price turntable to spinning vinyl at Lower East Side open mics every Sunday, building his craft one basement cipher at a time. He talks about the moment he knew he was truly in the game — working with Havoc from Mobb Deep, landing a beat for Harlem battle rapper J Mills that got Flex dropping bombs on Hot 97, and nearly signing to EPMD's Death Squad straight out of college.Beyond the career highlights, this conversation gets real about burnout, what happens to creative output when your personal life gets toxic, and why relationships are the real currency in New York's music scene. Scram also shares his thoughts on where DJing is heading, his complicated feelings about AI in music production, and the experimental non-hip-hop music sitting on his hard drive waiting to be released.If you love authentic New York hip-hop history, honest conversations about the creative grind, and the culture that built the music we all love — this one is for you.

DJ Evil Dee — founding member of Black Moon and one half of legendary production duo The Beatminerz — sits down with Heidi Hartwig to trace his journey from the block parties of Bushwick, Brooklyn to the airwaves of Hot 97 and beyond.

Evil Dee breaks down how he learned to DJ by sneaking into his older brother Mr. Walt's room, how a neighborhood joke became his iconic "Evil Dee is on the mix, come on kick it" drop, and how he built a underground mixtape empire — pressing hundreds of cassettes a night and placing them in every cab company in Bushwick before the internet existed.

He shares the full story of how Black Moon came together, how house music legend Gladys Pizarro helped them land their deal at Nervous Records, and how performing at the very first Hot 97 Summer Jam earned him a Monday night radio residency from 1994 to 1997. Plus, the moment Brandy walked into the wrong studio session and he broke her debut single on air.

Evil Dee also gets real about the state of New York nightlife today — why DJs need to actually DJ, why crowds need to get off their phones and back on the dance floor, and why his Saturday Night Dance Party on Twitch has become a club for people who gave up on clubs.

Nightlife legend Christina Visca sits down with Heidi Hartwig to tell the full, unfiltered story of how a girl from White Plains became one of the most important figures in New York City club history. If you've ever wondered what it actually felt like to live through the golden age of NYC nightlife — from Studio 54 to the garage to Sound Factory — this is the episode.

In this episode we cover:

• Growing up around the fashion world and gay culture — and what that shaped in her
• Her first experiences at gay clubs in Baltimore and Washington DC in high school
• Nights at Studio 54, Xenon, Danceteria, and the FIT college scene in the early 80s
• Being discovered by Peter Gatien and throwing her first professional parties at Limelight
• Working the door at Palladium, 1018, and what it means to truly curate a room
• The final years of Paradise Garage and the Saint, and the hole they left behind
• How she handed flyers out at the last Garage party and launched her own clubs
• Co-founding Baseline and then Sound Factory with Junior Vasquez and Phil Smith
• The after-hours police cat-and-mouse game at Sound Factory and why it was worth it
• Why Sound Factory was the most diverse nightclub in NYC history
• What's missing from nightlife today: community, membership culture, and dressing up
• Her vision for what a perfect modern club would look like
• The future of NYC nightlife, 24-hour districts, and the end of bottle service culture

Christina's story is ultimately about community — the sense of belonging she found on a dance floor as a teenager and has been building for everyone else ever since. This is essential listening for anyone who loves New York, dance music, or the culture that shaped a generation.

DJ Mighty Mi grew up carrying record crates between Philadelphia and Brooklyn at the exact moment hip-hop was becoming something that could change your life. Now a Las Vegas-based DJ, producer, and co-founder of the legendary rap duo High and Mighty and Eastern Conference Records, Mighty Mi sits down with Heidi Hartwig on Friends From New York for a wide-ranging conversation about culture, craft, and staying true to your lane.Mighty Mi's story is one of the great behind-the-scenes journeys in hip-hop. He wrote album reviews for The Source magazine while still in high school, faxing them to founder Jon Shecter at Harvard. He saved two summers of Foot Locker wages to buy a single pair of Technics turntables. He made his bones doing radio promos for the legendary Stretch Armstrong and Bobbito Garcia show. And he eventually landed a residency at Indochine, DJing honeycomb hideout parties alongside Jules — during the era when rappers freestyled on stage, Rosie Perez danced in the front row, and the entire nightclub moved as one.In this episode we cover:• Growing up between Philly and Brooklyn in the 1980s, absorbing both cities' hip-hop scenes and smuggling mixtapes between them on the Amtrak• His introduction to hip-hop in a middle school library listening to Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel on headphones• Writing record reviews for The Source as a teenager — including a review of the Artifacts' debut, years before signing Tame One to Eastern Conference Records• How seeing Public Enemy open for the Beastie Boys sparked the idea that he could actually participate in hip-hop, not just consume it• Saving two summers of Foot Locker paychecks to buy Technics turntables one at a time• Doing promos for the Stretch Armstrong and Bobbito Garcia show as an entry point into the New York scene• The art of building a room as a DJ — why New York parties were designed to start slow and peak late, and why every other city gets it wrong• The death of the dance floor: bottle service, models, and the Wall Street-ification of nightlife• His move to Las Vegas, learning house music from scratch, and watching Calvin Harris and the EDM era transform club culture• High and Mighty's new album 'Sound of Market' — featuring Large Professor, Chubb Rock, King Tee, and Tash from Tha Alkaholics — out now on vinyl, CD, and cassette• Using Twitch as a personal creative sanctuary for uncompromising golden era hip-hop sets• Why consistency — not chasing trends — is the only real career lesson, with the Alchemist as Exhibit A• What it still means to make people dance, and why that will always be enoughThis is a conversation for anyone who loves hip-hop, nightlife history, vinyl culture, and the New York that shaped a generation.Find DJ Mighty Mi's live sets and downloadable mixes at soundcloud.com/djmightymi. Stream or buy 'Sound of Market' by High and Mighty wherever you get your music.Friends From New York is a show about the people shaping culture through music, art, film, and nightlife. Hosted by photographer and director Heidi Hartwig. Follow the show for new episodes and find us on Instagram @friendsfromnewyork.

Cipha Sounds joins FFNY for a real New York conversation on music, media, hustle, crowd energy, and the long game of staying relevant. Funny, sharp, and full of stories, this episode gets into what it takes to keep evolving while staying true to where you came from.