Catie Disabato - The Ghost Network

“Molly loved secret histories. She also loved contradicting accounts of the same historical events. She liked ambiguities. She liked answerless questions. She told me that she was investigating the world that traditional maps hide from us,” Berliner said. “She said she felt like she had been walking down the street blindfolded, but she didn’t know she was wearing a blindfold. One day, she realized the blindfold was there and she pulled it off, but the place she saw was so unfamiliar that she couldn’t recognize it without a guide. And I was supposed to be that guide.

“That’s how she talked. She wasn’t crazy, not in any of the ways people thought she was, and she wasn’t an idiot. She had looked up all these papers David Wilson wrote as a graduate student, about philosophy and architecture, and she thought the New Situationists were hiding a secret agenda, something more secret than the subway bombings. She thought the group, the bombing, everything was incidental to — or at least, concurrent with — some greater secret goal. She didn’t think I knew what it was, she thought it had been kept at ‘the highest levels of the New Situationists.’ I asked her how she knew I wasn’t at the highest level and she said, ‘I understand how the New Situationists worked. If you had been at the highest level, you never would’ve let anybody know your name.’ ”

Berliner told Molly Metropolis he would think about working with her, but before he could agree to divulge anything about the New Situationists, he needed to check with the only higher-up he still talked to. The next day, he took the train to the Dwight Correctional Center for an unscheduled visit. He brought Kraus an expensive new bra, cigarettes, nail polish, and a croissant from her favorite bakery. They exchanged a few pleasantries, but Berliner was anxious to ask her about the New Situationists. He asked her if she thought the New Situationists possibly had a “secret agenda.” Without batting an eyelash, she told him that it was very possible. Kraus told Berliner about a side of the New Situationists he hadn’t seen. The president had often ranted about creating a brotherhood of politicians and lobbyists who would eventually control Chicago’s infrastructure. The New Situationists were ambitious and slightly delusional, Kraus told Berliner, so of course they had secret plans. The president was always very secretive; Kraus had often been excluded from meetings. “Probably,” she joked, “they wanted to take over the world.” iAlso, Kraus pointed out, they were incredibly well funded for an anarchist movement — suspiciously well funded.

For Kraus’s benefit, Berliner recounted the story of Molly Metropolis’s visit, about her “pretentions about being famous,” and about her proposed investigation into the New Situationists’ secret agenda. Kraus told Berliner to set up a meeting between herself and Molly. She and Molly were still pretending they hadn’t met. To my knowledge, neither Kraus nor Molly ever recounted what happened during their meetings, but Molly must’ve charmed Kraus. When Berliner returned the next day, Kraus told him to go ahead and investigate with Molly. Kraus warned Berliner not to mention Molly or the investigation to David Wilson, because he would try to stop them. She insisted Berliner couldn’t use any of his old friends or contacts in the New Situationists. She also asked him to visit frequently and update her about the investigation. She wanted to see what he would find.

That night, Berliner called Molly and asked her to meet him at the corner of West Armitage and North Racine. She arrived an hour later, wearing a vintage floral jumpsuit and black stilettos with pink rhinestones. Berliner took her into the New Situationist headquarters; the rooms weren’t as impressive as they had been when Kraus took Berliner down for the first time. Berliner showed her Kraus’s old room. Molly ran her fingers along the walls and asked if they could stay the night. Berliner offered to find another room to sleep in, but Molly asked him to stay, if he could be a gentleman with her. She told him she had nightmares almost every night. Berliner slept on the couch.

The next morning, Molly and Berliner spent a few hours combing through the debris the New Situationist leadership had left behind in their haste to make the strange, secretive political group part of their past. In the giant office at the end of the hall — he still called it “The Trick” then, though later he would offhandedly call it Metro’s Room — Berliner found several filing boxes full of documents.

In the spring of 2007, Molly Metropolis signed with SDFC Records and created the General Council. She added Berliner to her personal payroll — he was her first paid staff member, ever — and christened their fledgling collaboration the Urban Planning Committee, a secret offshoot of the General Council. Molly kept her work with Berliner hidden from everyone, including her family and closest friends; taking a page out of the New Situationists’ book, she refused to even write down the name. At the top of her notebooks about the Urban Planning Committee she wrote, “Here is the Secret History of the U.P.C.” j

Molly only mentioned Berliner publicly once, to the German music news outlet Knall Producktion : “The inspiration for the General Council came from Andy Warhol’s Factory as well as the entourage of beautiful, glowing people that David Bowie always had around him, his friends, the people at his parties. But I got the name from my friend Nick Berliner, who is teaching me about architecture.” k

That summer, Molly Metropolis gave her first major live performance since signing with SDFC and receiving the benefit of their marketing department. She played during an early timeslot at Chicago’s giant summer music festival, Lollapalooza. She had no light show, no backdrop, no pyrotechnics, just a DJ, a drummer, and a jeweled keyboard she played herself. Molly came onstage in a metallic, silver bra and lace leggings. lShe performed some songs that eventually found their way onto Cause Célèbrety , including an early version of her first single “Don’t Stop (N’Arrête Pas),” which was produced by Astroman and included short bridge from the producer/rapper: “Work, work, work your body/Pop, pop, pop a Molly.” Molly also sang a Cause Célèbrety album cut called “Pop-timist,” as well as “Maps (Find Me),” but the crowd didn’t like the show. “Too synth-y,” several bloggers complained. m

After her performance, Molly hung around in the artist tent for a few hours, then left, promising to meet up with her friends and the record executives at the private SDFC after-party that night. She threw on one of her deep V-neck T-shirts, took a cab to Armitage and Racine, and descended into the basement, where Berliner was waiting for her. She hugged him and said, “I’ve left you alone for too long, my darling. I’ve missed you and the things we’re doing together.”

Molly told Berliner the details of her performance and complained about the lethargic crowd while they each had a cigarette in the “smoking room”—one of the apartments, which Berliner had redecorated with vintage leather armchairs, oil paintings of deer and buffalo, and of course, framed maps. When Molly asked Berliner what he had been up to in the weeks since they’d last seen each other, Berliner revealed his utter lack of a social life by jumping right into business talk: he had found something. Berliner and Molly went back to the huge two-story office where Berliner stored the documents.

Berliner knew the New Situationists’ record-keeping policies. They never wrote down or recorded anything about their organization on computers, instead preferring to use typewriters or hand-written notes to create archives that couldn’t be hacked and could be easily destroyed by shredding or burning. More likely than not, the two boxes of documents contained every physical record the New Situationists had ever produced, with the exception of the letter sent to the Chicago Tribune taking credit for the subway bombings, which is still languishing somewhere in an FBI evidence locker. According to Berliner, the records contained mostly letters between members. In the letters, the New Situationists mostly discussed the “most public” parts of the operation, such as Kraus’s anti-recruitment efforts.